Re: Fallback language for internationalized string

[Anders Sundman]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:

>Anders Sundman <anders@4zm.org> writes:
>
>> Is it possible to get bash to use a fallback language for showing
>> localized strings if no translation exists for the current language?
>> Instead of using the 'raw' msgid that is.
>
>The msgid is supossed to be the fallback.  That's how gettext works.
>

There are unfortunately two problems with this. I was hoping that a specific 
language fallback would fix them.

1. If you try to use the same msgid twice in a script you get an error when 
extracting it. Using the same human readable string twice is however a valid 
use case. So using 'wierd' (e.g. numbered) msgids make sense. But you don't 
ever want the user to see this.

2. If you use en strings as msgids and you later have to fix a simple spelling 
error for en, then all translation files have to be modified. Or, you can add a 
patched translation for en and keep the msgid, but that is just confusing.

// Anders
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.