Adding context information for tooltips

["Joao S. O. Bueno" <gwidion mpc com br>]

Hi there,

It is the first time I write to this list. and actually I've never before been  
subscribed to this list, although I've been maintaning GIMP and its 
associated modules to pt_BR for the last few years.

When I opened the po files for updating today, I noticed a large number of new 
fuzzy strings, and soon found out they had only changed because the gettext 
calls in GIMP got updated to the NC_ call which allows the inclusion of a 
context comment for translators.

So, a previously uncommented string like "_Add to Selection" now shows up on 
the translation GUI tool I use with a comment like "channels-action".

That is actually great, and will surely ease the work for translators and make 
translations less prone to context related errors.

However, on the very same call that sets the above string, a tooltip is also 
set. In this case "Add this channel to the current selection". However, this 
one is also contexted as "channels-action".

Now, a thing that  is always difficult for me as a translator is exactly to 
distinguish which strings are for labels, and which ones are for tooltips - 
that makes a big difference at least for Portguese, but I suppose for a lot 
of languages as well, due to the fact that Labels are usually tranaslated to 
infinitive or imperative form, and tooltips are translated to the third 
person form (as they describe an action). In English, both forms usually are 
written the same way, so looking only at the string is hard to know if a 
"Rename file" string refers to a label - in which case, I ṕd transalte it 
to "Renomear arquivo", or to a tooltip, in which case the pratice, and mos t 
confortable form for users, is to have it as  "Renomear arquivo".

I know the example I picked with the GIMP tooltips above is a case in which it 
is easy to distinguish the label and the tooltip, but, that is not always the 
case.

I ḋ like to propose, since thses NC_ calls are being introduced now (at least 
in GIMP - I don't know about other gnome-projects) to have teh context string 
to distinguish between the Label and the Tooltip strings.

In the example above, instead of having "channels-action" describing 
both  "_Add to Selection" and "Add this channel to the current selection",
I'd propose describing the lable "_Add to selection" 
with "channels-action-label" and the tooltip with "channels-action-tooltip".

In other words source code for that  would change from:
  { "channels-selection-add", GIMP_STOCK_SELECTION_ADD,
    NC_("channels-action", "_Add to Selection"), NULL,
    NC_("channels-action", "Add this channel to the current selection"),
    GIMP_CHANNEL_OP_ADD, FALSE,
    GIMP_HELP_CHANNEL_SELECTION_ADD },
to

  { "channels-selection-add", GIMP_STOCK_SELECTION_ADD,
    NC_("channels-action-label", "_Add to Selection"), NULL,
    NC_("channels-action-tooltip", "Add this channel to the current 
selection"),
    GIMP_CHANNEL_OP_ADD, FALSE,
    GIMP_HELP_CHANNEL_SELECTION_ADD },

What do you think of this as  a general policy? At least for .pt_BR it would 
make a lot of sense and help translators all over. 

(If you like the idea, I would make available a script to help the updating of 
these NC_ calls )

Regards,

	js
	-><-