[Gaim-devel] Re: [Gaim-i18n] Fwd: [Gaim-bugs] [ gaim-Bugs-1333076 ] Shrinkable window

[Javier <jf...@co...>]

[ Sorry to answer late to this e-mail, hopefully the answer is useful for y=
ou
Luke ]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 12:00:33PM -0500, Luke Schierer wrote:
>=20
> How do we address such bugs?  Users are understandably upset when a
> window takes up an inordinate amount of their screen space.  While
> many users have a warped idea of how much screen space use is "too
> much," it never the less is true that the line exists _somewhere_,
> and that with very long menu strings, we will exceed it.

I would consider those bugs, and try to send them to the one translating Ga=
im
in order to try to make him think on the issue and shorten the menus (or use
abreviations)

> In English, we restrict ourselves to one or two word menus, with one
> word heavily favored.  This sometimes yeilds menus that are not
> _perfectly_ intuitive, and indeed, there have been many pushes to
> reorganize our menus.  Still, it gives the user an idea of what is
> contained in the menu.  Is it possible to simply use a shorter word
> in the translations?  I don't know.

Maybe it would be good to add comments in the POT files (these can be
automatically added if you use the proper magic in the source files) to tell
translators to limit the size of a given text to XXX chars wide. I'm used to
translating the Debian installer, which has size limitations in the menus of
the text installation, and the developers automatically add comments in some
msgstrs telling us (translators) how to properly translate something or may=
be
limit the translation somehow because of X, Y or Z.

Even if translations cannot use shorter words maybe they can use
abbreviations instead. However, translators are not aware of the issues the=
ir
translations might cause unless you (developers) notify them, and the proper
way is automatic comments in the po file that the translators will be able =
to
see when working with them (better yet if they are preceded with something
like 'WARNING')

Just my (late) 2c.

Javier

PS: I've had that issue myself with *buttons* not menus, i translated 'info'
to "informacion" (in spanish) which resulted, IIRC, in a very long button
that made the main Gaim window larger than necessary. I was not aware of th=
is
until a user notified me directly.