Re: variables markers: allowing x-* markers

[Dwayne Bailey]

On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 17:11 +0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Dwayne Bailey wrote:
> > You can currently only use markers defined in Gettext itself such as
> > c-format and no-c-format.  It would be useful in cases where PO is being
> > used outside of the normal Gettext domain to allow user defined markers
> > such as x-oo-format.  This simple addition would allow Gettext to
> > operate normally and other tools that can manipulate these files to be
> > able to execute valid operations based on the information.
> 
> How would such user-defined markers be handled during msgmerge's operation?
> 
> If the marker is to be copied from the old PO file to the new PO file, you can
> put this marker into the translator comments (line prefix '# ').
> 
> If the marker is to be copied from the POT file to the new PO file, you can
> put this marker into the extracted comments (line prefix '#.').

They are created in reference to the 'source' thus they need to be in #.
so that they are overwritten by subsequent POT files.

Unfortunately this is messy as it is information intended for a tool
(like #,), not a user as a traditional extracted comments are.

> If the marker needs special handling during merge, please tell me about it;
> then there is a chance that it becomes a '#,' flag.

The cases where we would want to use these in the Toolkit are:

Mozilla:
* .properties - already covered by java-format I think, although Mozilla
doesn't use fully compliant .properties files
* .dtd - not covered by anything, needs to mark &entity; references

OpenOffice.org:
* No real standard but we can identify and would want to mark about 10
styles of variables

The last one highlights the issue we are most concerned with.  My
suggestion being that we can use the format that Gettext tools will
simply ignore but that other tools can choose to process.  I'd prefer
not to put it in #. as then the tools need to examine multiple places to
decide what to do.

-- 
Dwayne Bailey
Translate.org.za

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