Re: [Gaim-i18n] Search comment for Jabber is not translatable

[Vincent v. A. <adr...@gn...>]

Op Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:29:13 -0500 (EST)
schreef Etan Reisner <de...@ed...>:

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Vincent van Adrighem wrote:
>=20
> <snip>
>=20
> > Good point. The situation of hardcoded fields and custom messages
> > is bogus anyway. We can remove/hide it safely and insert our own
> > message, if needed. We could insert a "click here for server info"
> > kind of widget. Perhaps that triangle flip open widget at the
> > bottom of the window, with this text in it, or maybe a tooltip of
> > somesort....I don't know, just thinking aloud. But a casual user
> > should not need it anyway. The "use % for wildcard" text should
> > stay though. Many will otherwise try to use
> > * as a wildcard.
>=20
> You can't just remove server messages, they do have meaning or they=20
> wouldn't be there. Hiding the message is doable, though not really=20
> optimal.

The problem here is with the message not being translated. It's of no
use anyway to most people in non-english countries, so we might as
well hide it. Imagine the message being in Japanese. Or worse, in
a language you sortof understand, but not quite. You'd want it gone,
right? The idea is to hide information that's more confusing than
informative, but keep it there in case the user wants to know more.

> How exactly do you propose to keep part of server information?
> Keeping in mind that different servers have different instructions
> and different semantics. Some servers clearly use % as a wildcard,
> others might use * or & or anything else you can imagine.

I'm sorry about the fuzzyness of my reply. I didn't mean keeping part
of the message. I meant replacing the server message with a fixed
message explaning the "% is a wildcard" thing. But as you explain in
your text here, that would be no solution. Maybe a "% or * might be a
wildcard" line...

> As Nathan pointed out, servers need to send information, the
> information needs to come from the server, this isn't going to
> stop, it's only going to increase as more jabber servers exist and
> more features exist. And the information is going to vary between
> different servers and possibly even between different versions of
> the same server.

Different versions of gibberish don't make no useful message. That's
what I was trying to make clear. We have a problem where people can't
read English text. That is why we translate in the first place.

The ideal solution would be to get into the development process of
all jabber server software and translate it there. Then we could use
the xml:lang stuff nathan writes about. But that's only a long term
solution. Not a 2006 solution.

This simple translation problem is slowly turning into a fundamental
problem, eh? Hmmm, just thinking out loud here: Would it be possible
to pipe the server message through gettext? We could then, for
example, translate the three most used messages. And when they
change, they will be English again, but the user might be able to do
something with the info. that, in combination with some hiding, would
be a (albeit very hackish) workable situation, right? I repeat, just
thinking out loud.

Kind regards,
Vincent van Adrighem