Sven Neumann wrote:
> >
> > Almost, but not quite.
> >
> > gettext was a good compromise at the time, but leaves a lot to be desired.
> > Especially when one source english term ( "its" for example ) might be
> > translated differently depending on context.
>
> When working carefully with gettext, you can translate all appearances of the
> same word differently. Since the location of the string in the source code is
> contained in the po files, it is easy (even without knowing the entire source)
> to detect in what context/dialog the word is used.
Yes, that's true. But it still is problematic. Mainly it makes it more
transparent for the programmer in the first place, but it creates a more complex
and fragile binding.
Personally I think that it's no longer necessary to trick programmers into
supporting internationalization like it was back in the early '90s. Especially
with the current scope of the Internet and it's community.
If some simple web site kept this information in some XML format (perhaps one of
those being hammered out by the translation software companies) then it could
always be easily converted down at distribution time into stuff proper for
gettext. Then later if we found a good replacement for gettext (ICU?), we could
have all the needed information in place.
--
"My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box" - W.A.Y.
