[GRASS5] Re: [GRASSLIST:4446] Re: [GRASS translations] Slovenian

[Glynn Clements]

Paul Kelly wrote:

> >> question:
> >>
> >> if we change a _("text string") in the original source code, do we need
> >> to go though all the translation sets and adjust them too? or can the
> >> "make update-po" step somehow figure this out?
> >
> > You don't *need* to do anything. If the string can't be found in the
> > message catalogue, the original (English) string will be returned.
> >
> > Apart from that, keeping the message catalogues in sync with the
> > source code is the responsibility of the translators, not of the
> > programmers.
> 
> Does that mean that the English versions of all the messages are set in 
> stone in the source code while the translations can be changed freely 
> without affecting anything else? I'm not sure if I understand it 
> correctly, but if all the other translations are based on the exact form 
> of words of the English message, then presumably it would not be a good 
> idea for developers to ever try and change the messages any more (to make 
> them less confusing or more informative), as the translations would not 
> then work? Or are the messages identified by the line they occur in the
> source file or some other mechanism like that?

The string literal in the source code is used as the key into the
message catalogue, so if you change the string, all of the .po files
have to be changed accordingly.

However, if you want to change the string which is used for English
locales without changing the source code, you can just create an
English message catalogue.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>