Re: GDM string "%x" and c-format in po file

[Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny eglug org>]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 02:16:06PM +0200, Tommi Vainikainen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was about to update gdm's translation, and noticed that only change
> was string "%x" which was already translated but the old translation did
> not have "c-format" marker for msgid. Because this string goes to
> strftime, not to printf, I think this should not have c-format. And if I
> translate is at localized preferred date format, I get msgfmt validation
> errors. On the other hand if every translation team trusts %x to do
> correct thing automatically, this string does not need translation...
> 
> I think following change is correct fix for this, but we are now in code
> freeze right? The diff does not change code but only comments. Is this
> enough important from l10n perspective to get more visibility, is this
> an issue to many teams or should I just use no-op %x translation?
> 
> diff --git a/gui/simple-greeter/gdm-clock-widget.c b/gui/simple-greeter/gdm-cloc
> index 9008e6d..b3e6da8 100644
> --- a/gui/simple-greeter/gdm-clock-widget.c
> +++ b/gui/simple-greeter/gdm-clock-widget.c
> @@ -83,6 +83,7 @@ update_time_format (GdmClockWidget *clock)
>                  clock_format = _("%a %l:%M:%S %p");
>  
>                  /* translators: This is the time format to use for the date
> +                 * xgettext:no-c-format
>                   */
>                  tooltip_format = _("%x");
>          } else {
> @@ -91,6 +92,9 @@ update_time_format (GdmClockWidget *clock)
>                   */
>                  clock_format = _("%a %l:%M %p");
>  
> +                /* translators: This is the time format to use for the date
> +                 * xgettext:no-c-format
> +                 */
>                  tooltip_format = _("%x");
>          }

The "%x" is mostly broken for Arabic (faulty glibc locale data), I was
getting around this error by removing the c-format line manually as I
hadn't enough time to trace it, so I'm all with this fix.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer