Re: itstool improvements

[Luc Pionchon <pionchon luc gmail com>]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 20:24, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-03-27 at 18:35 +0300, Luc Pionchon wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 17:45, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
>> > I'm thinking of outputting something like this:
>> >
>> > #. # item/p
>> > #.
>> > #. ## ../item
>> > #. comment for item
>> > #.
>> > #. ## item/p
>> > #. comment for p
>> > #.
>> > #. ## item/p/em
>> > #. comment for em
>> > #: somefile.page:25
>> > msgid ""
>> > "This is a <em its:locNote=\"comment for em\">sentence</em>."
>>
>> is the <em> locNote meant to be translated ?
>
> It is not, though in practice it doesn't really matter whether
> you translate it. itstool doesn't modify inline markup when it
> puts them in messages. I could investigate stripping locNote
> attributes, but that starts to lead down a dangerous path.
>
> I think we should generally avoid putting locNotes on inline
> elements, because it leads to ugly messages. But I want to make
> sure they're displayed for translators if they're there.

In theory I would say that if the final destination for the comment is
the translator, then it should not be passed to gettext (so it should
not be in the msgid).

>From more practical point of view I suspect it will bring confusion:
should I translate it? Or not? Should I follow what the comment says?
Or not? With a graphical translation tool, it explicitly say "string
to be translated" or something like that.

Also if I am right changing or removing the inline comment will turn
the string fuzzy. Is this really what we want?

(and I would guess that it would impact translation memories)


For the format, po files are already quite obscure and not every
translator has technical background, should we consider a more
explicit markup? Something like, for example,

#. ## the translatable string is enclosed within <item><p>
#.
#. ## Localization note for <item>:
#. lorem ipsum blah blah
#.
#. ## Localization note for <item><p>:
#. lorem ipsum blah blah
#
#. ## Localization note for <item><p><em>:
#. lorem ipsum blah blah
#


> (Also note that ITS allows rules to be embedded in the file,
> and that these could cause an inline element to have a locNote
> without having an its:locNote attribute.)

(I don't understand what it means)


>> Just to be sure, "locNote" stands for localization note, right?
>
> Yes. "Localization note" or "locNote" is the standard ITS term
> for what we'd call translator comments.

Thanks!