Re: Bug#196637: gettext: xgettext messes with control characters (fwd)

[Bruno Haible]

Göran Weinholt wrote:

> xgettext has been changing \v to ^K for some time now. Please make it
> stop.
>
> $ echo 'gettext("This ->\v<- is a \\v.\n")'|xgettext -L c -o - -|tail -3
> #: standard input:1
> msgid "This ->
>               <- is a \\v.\n"
> msgstr ""

If you want a C-like escape sequence in the POT file you can use the option
--escape for this purpose:

$ echo 'gettext("This ->\v<- is a \\v.\n")'|xgettext -L c --escape -o - -|tail 
-3
#: Standardeingabe:1
msgid "This ->\013<- is a \\v.\n"
msgstr ""

> Is there any good reason for this? It makes the translators job harder

Maybe the program's author could try to avoid the control character \v
in his translatable strings? Most translators will have problems with this.
I'd not recommend using such control characters in strings that get
translated.

> since \n and possibly other control characters
> aren't treated the same way.

This inconsistency is because \v is less standard (a more recent invention)
than \n and \b.

The same holds for \a.

Bruno