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Re: [Bug-gnulib] 4-gary-version-etc-full-author-string.patch


From: Bruno Haible
Subject: Re: [Bug-gnulib] 4-gary-version-etc-full-author-string.patch
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 12:42:21 +0200
User-agent: KMail/1.5

Paul Eggert wrote:
> > The translator can insert newlines in his translations where he wants to.
>
> Do you mean the translations of names, or the translations of the
> _("Written by %s, %s, and %s.\n") msgids?

Translations of proper names shouldn't contain newlines, obviously.

I meant that if the English msgid is

     "Written by %s, %s, %s,\n%s, and %s.\n"

then a French translator can translate it to

     "Écrit par %s, %s, %s,\n%s et %s.\n"

This works fine for n = 1...10, and for n > 10 we can use "..." approach.

> If you meant that translators should insert newlines in their
> translations of _("Written by %s, %s, and %s.\n"), then I don't see
> how that can work well either.  One program might have three authors
> with long names, so newlines need to be inserted, while a different
> program might have three authors with short names, so no newlines
> should be inserted.

It will not be optimal, certainly. But I think it's bearable.

The alternative approach is to add real line breaking to version-etc,
which I object against, because
  1. too much code to be linked statically into each executable,
  2. tricky issue with non-breaking space inside translation of proper
     names
  3. a terminal's window size is != 80 in many cases nowadays, but the
     GNU standards forbid us to take into account the real terminal
     width while processing --version and --help.

> If we stick to strings like _("Written by Mike Haertel and Paul
> Eggert."), we avoid all these issues, and save ourselves work.

But if we do this, 30 translators have a lot of work. For what benefit?
For the benefit that they can insert line breaks here and there. A very
small benefit!

Bruno





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