Re: [Gaim-i18n] Untranslatable string "Title"

[Ethan B. <ebl...@cs...>]

Javier Fern=E1ndez-Sanguino Pe=F1a spake unto us the following wisdom:
> In Debian (well, in the Debian Installer) we have used brackets in the PO
> strings to disambiguate strings. The po-debconf tool (which is
> Debian-specific) strips the brackets from PO strings so that they are not
> used on program output). So, you could have this:
>=20
> msgid "none[Refers to a man]"
> msgstr "ninguno"
>=20
> msgid "none[Refers to a woman]"
> msgstr "ninguna"
>=20
> [ Note: this is an example of a word which refers to a gender ]
>=20
> Brackets are, however, currently used in some msgid's in Gaim. Maybe you
> could use a different bracket (maybe {} ?) that would get removed somehow?

This is similar to the best proposal I've seen.  What if we set up
some sort of extremely unlikely delineation (e.g., [NB: <string>]),
and then insert a pre-gettext function to be used for such strings,
which strips that marker if it exists afater calling gettext?  That is
to say[1]:

    const char *gaim_annotated_string(const char *str)
    {
        static char *buf;
        static int blen;
        const char *tstr;
        const char *f, *t, *note;
        int len;

        tstr =3D _(str);

        if ((note =3D strstr(tstr, "[NB: ")) =3D=3D NULL)
            return tstr;

        len =3D strlen(tstr);
        if (buf =3D=3D NULL || blen < len) {
            buf =3D realloc(buf, len);
            blen =3D len;
        }

        f =3D tstr;
        t =3D buf;
        do {
            strncpy(t, f, note - f);
            t +=3D note - f;
            if ((f =3D strstr(f, "]") !=3D NULL)
                f++;
        } while (f && *f);
        t =3D '\0';

        return t;
    }

Then:

    gaim_annotated_string("Foo[NB: Adjective]");

> > If we switch, are we going to break lots of translations? It seems like
> > we could fix things up with some careful sed'ing of the .po files,
> > though.
>=20
> I wouldn't mind if some strings got fuzzy because of this, that would mak=
e me
> review if I translated them correctly.

I agree -- we're actually lucky that Ambrose caught such a thing.
There could be lurking errors in there, already.

Ethan

[1] Completely untested, of course -- I didn't even try to compile it.

--=20
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764