Re: Removing unwanted internationalization info

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

fre 2004-06-18 klockan 17.22 skrev Danilo Segan:
> >> >> Not even that would help, since intltool works with all the *.po files
> >> >> it can find in a po directory.  That's bad, so I invite anyone to work
> >> >> on a patch ;)
> >> >
> >> > Is there a bug report in Bugzilla?
> >> 
> >> Not that I know about — feel free to make one, though I doubt anyone
> >> will consider this high priority, at least not until most of the
> >> Gnome modules switch to "new" gettext layout with easily accessible 
> >> po/LINGUAS file (instead of parsing configure.* for ALL_LINGUAS
> >> line).
> >
> > Even though it may not be high priority: if it's not reported in
> > Bugzilla, it's not a bug.
> 
> Technically, it's not a bug.  It's feature of the design.  Some may
> think it's good feature, but I don't -- I consider it a bad feature.
> Thus, I'm not going to report it in Bugzilla as a bug (maybe as a
> RFE), since I don't consider it a bug per se.

I'm not sure I understand this...

The centuries old and documented way of properly disabling a translation
from being used is to remove its entry in the ALL_LINGUAS line, instead
of having to delete or rename actual translation files. Intltool doesn't
support this convention, but instead insists that every po file that
exists should have its translations merged, regardless of the
ALL_LINGUAS setting.

Why do you consider this intltool behavior not to be a bug? What is the
benefit of intltool, unlike gettext, ignoring this setting?

I'm afraid I don't understand that. I don't see anyone benefitting from
intltool being inconsistent with gettext in this area and ignoring this
setting.

Also, a bug is when an application doesn't behave as perhaps expected.
This misbehavior could be of any reason: a (previously unknown)
accidental code error, but also a known problem where the fix is not
implemented yet, or a problem difficult to fix. The reason *why* the bug
exists is a totally orthogonal issue to whether *it is* a bug and should
be reported.
If it is a misbehavior it should be reported as a bug. *Then* one can
discuss to what to do in order to solve it, and whether it would be
simple or difficult.

To me, it sounds like you're either claiming that this unexpected
behavior is not a problem at all, or that you're claiming that since it
may be difficult to fix we shouldn't even keep track of the problem and
instead ignore it and forget it. Either way, I can't for my life figure
out why.


Christian