Would it save time for translators to fold similar lines?

["Thomas Thurman" <tthurman gnome org>]

I note that, for example, in metacity we have lines like this:

#: ../src/theme-parser.c:1540
#, c-format
msgid "No \"top\" attribute on element <%s>"
msgstr ""

#: ../src/theme-parser.c:1547
#, c-format
msgid "No \"bottom\" attribute on element <%s>"
msgstr ""

#: ../src/theme-parser.c:1554
#, c-format
msgid "No \"left\" attribute on element <%s>"
msgstr ""

#: ../src/theme-parser.c:1561
#, c-format
msgid "No \"right\" attribute on element <%s>"
msgstr ""

Now, "top", "bottom', etc. are keywords and so can't be changed. I
could quite easily change this so that it said

msgid "No \"%s\" attribute on element <%s>"

thus eliminating three msgids. There are very many such cases, not
only in metacity.

So:

1) It would have saved trouble had the system been designed like this
originally, wouldn't it?

2) If so, should we change existing lines so that they work this way,
given that they will both cause existing translations to vanish but
also reduce the msgid count in translation files?

3) If so, should we have some kind of GNOME Goal to identify and
eliminate such lines?

T