Re: [bug-gettext] Generalized Gettext, take two

[Chusslove Illich]

> [: Daiki Ueno :]
> I guess this would increase the maintenance burden of Gettext. Does it
> really need to be included in the Gettext distribution, rather than
> external library (for example, Python's gettext module adds a nice
> interface to *gettext function family, but it is distributed in the Python
> distribution)?

Technically, having it outside of Gettext would weaken the cleanliness of
the design. For example, there couldn't be the proposed new PO format
keyword (msgscr), as there would be no point supporting it with Gettext
tools (msgfmt, xgettext...) if there is no way to use it with Gettext
itself.

Organizationally, having the system outside of Gettext would be missing one
of the main points: presenting translators with one unified Gettext message
semantics, no matter which programming language/environment has been used
under the hood (insofar bindings exist).

Doing away with both advantages, however...

> So, has the translation system already been practically used?

...yes, it is the Gettext wrapper in KDE 4, starting from 2008. It is a bit
stripped-down version of the current proposal: it has Qt/Boost-like ordinal
placeholders (%1, %2...) only, it embeds the scripted translation into
msgstr, and it has fixed instead of customizable markup (the revision for
KDE 5 will introduce customizable markup).

-- 
Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)

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