Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Blank msgids in po file

[Tobias Burnus <burnus@xxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Neil Howe schrieb:
> Looking at the po file, the first msgid is an empty string and the
> second is a space (see below).
>
> Is it straightforward for us to change these 2 id's so they contain at
> least 1 non-whitespace char or are they like this for a good reason?
>   
I think .po files are assumed to have an empty id for translation
information.
Many tools use this data. For instance msgfmt uses the charset data to
determine the charset. I think it would be a bad idea too change this.

For the space " ", one may consider to not include it in the po file - I
do not believe anyone in any language wants to put there anything else
but a space. In any case I don't want to have something like "space"
there, because this may get translated.


In addition, I think one really needs some documentation regarding the
translations, i.e. what to translate and what not.
I'd like to see some general information e.g. for

msgid  "&Blank Tool;Activate the blank tool;Blank"
msgid "&About Xara XS;Information about Xara XS ;AboutOp"
msgid "CAMELOT_BUTTONBAR"
msgid "XYZxyz"

What to translate and what not? And what means the third entry after the
";"?

In C programs, comments which appear just before the text are included
in the .po file. Example:
#. Add/Remove tab
msgid "Add/Remove"
#. 'Unsupported' translations must not contain spaces
msgid "Unsupported"
#. The following string is never displayed on the screen, but used to
#. generate an appropriately sized font.  Please translate the
#. final portion of this string (ABCDEFabcdef) into an equivalently
#. sized, 12-character string in the target locale. [...]


Using the xrc files, one cannot do this directly. Could one update the
scripts to include such a string by using
    <label>XYZxyz<!-- static text, don't change--></label>
and write then in the .po file:
#. static text, don't change
#: simon-strings.xrc
msgid "XYZxyz"

or at least the "#: <file>" part?

Tobias