[: Santiago Vila :]
[...] in the manual:
`-w NUMBER'
`--width=NUMBER'
[...]
So, it says that long strings will be split, but it does not say that
short lines will be merged.
But this is precisely the intended behavior, so at best, the manual could be
updated to reflect this. Or even that is not necessary, since it is implied
by the fact that strings are always rewrapped. But I think this is beside
the point. This option, and any other controllable wrapping behavior,
relates only to message fields (msgid, msgstr...) -- this is what is meant
by "strings".
As for comments, the behavior is as follows: comments under sole control of
Gettext tools are always rewrapped, and other comments are not. Thus: source
references and flags are rewrapped, but extracted comments and translator
comments are not. (Excluding previous field comments, which are treated like
strings.) I see no problem in this behavior.
In fact, sometimes it serves to expose abuse of PO elements, such as in this
case:
#: source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes/node_shader_tex_coord.c:40
#: bpy.types.Image.mapping:'REFLECTION'
#: bpy.types.MaterialVolume.reflection
#: bpy.types.RenderLayer.use_pass_reflection
#: bpy.types.RenderPass.type:'REFLECTION'
Only the first line here is source reference, and only that line should be
source reference comment. These other lines should have been put into
extracted comments:
#. bpy.types.Image.mapping:'REFLECTION'
#. bpy.types.MaterialVolume.reflection
#. bpy.types.RenderLayer.use_pass_reflection
#. bpy.types.RenderPass.type:'REFLECTION'
#: source/blender/nodes/shader/nodes/node_shader_tex_coord.c:40
and then their wrapping would have been kept as is.