From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30032 invoked by alias); 26 Oct 2004 04:47:49 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 30004 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2004 04:47:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO legolas.inter.net.il) (192.114.186.24) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 26 Oct 2004 04:47:48 -0000 Received: from zaretski ([80.230.142.68]) by legolas.inter.net.il (MOS 3.5.3-GR) with ESMTP id CYF79739 (AUTH halo1); Tue, 26 Oct 2004 06:47:06 +0200 (IST) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 04:47:00 -0000 From: "Eli Zaretskii" To: Daniel Jacobowitz Message-ID: <01c4bb16$Blat.v2.2.2$57f587c0@zahav.net.il> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 CC: ibr@ata.cs.hun.edu.tr, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com In-reply-to: <20041025202052.GA15021@nevyn.them.org> (message from Daniel Jacobowitz on Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:20:52 -0400) Subject: Re: an i18n sample Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii References: <20041024104805.GA2369@ata.cs.hun.edu.tr> <01c4b9ff$Blat.v2.2.2$1ebcb860@zahav.net.il> <20041024201802.GA17380@nevyn.them.org> <01c4bace$Blat.v2.2.2$09c744a0@zahav.net.il> <20041025202052.GA15021@nevyn.them.org> X-SW-Source: 2004-10/txt/msg00429.txt.bz2 > Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:20:52 -0400 > From: Daniel Jacobowitz > Cc: ibr@ata.cs.hun.edu.tr, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com > > Sorry, my wording was not clear; I understood your suggestion. I still > disagree with it. I think that a type whose name is "" or > _("") should recieve the same output as a type whose TYPE_NAME > is NULL. I don't understand what you mean by "should receive the same output". Can you explain? > A format string is a different sort of problem than a partial sentence. > It's a complete grammatical construct, but we have to take what steps > we can to make sure that the parts that get substituted in make sense > in any language. Given a string "", how would a translator know that it is supposed to be a substitution for %s in the format string? The only way to know that is to read the source, which a translator normally does not do. Without knowing the context of "", the translator is unlikely to find a good translation for it. > Can you give an example where the two above sentences should have > different structure? I can't think of one. We should use good practices, because it is impossible to ask us to know enough languages to decide whether every specific case can or cannot go wrong. The principle is "avoid partial sentences as much as you can", for the reasons I tried to explain.