sed and general gettext .po file suggestions

[Karl Berry]

I received (at address@hidden) this suggestion from a translator
today.  Thanks, Clytie.  I'm not sure how exactly to encourage it, but
perhaps it could be more prominently mentioned in the gettext manuals.

Bruno and all, if you think this encouragement would be useful to
include in the coding standards, let's try to dream up some words about
it and propose it to rms.

BTW, Clytie, every GNU package should have a clearly designated bug
reporting address (eg, in the top level README, in the documentation, in
the package web pages, namong other places).  If it doesn't, that itself
is a bug :).

Best,
karl


Subject: msgid query for sed-1.4.4.vi.po
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:32:21 +1030
From: Clytie Siddall <address@hidden>

[...]

Please encourage your developers to include a:

Report-Msgid-Bugs-To:

header in their .pot and .po files. Here I am again, writing to you to
try and contact a developer in order to query a msgid. Please also
encourage your developers to use the comments field, so strings like:

#: lib/utils.c:220
#, c-format
msgid "[0] """

do not appear without some explanation. I'm not willing to guess at the
meaning, and mess up the app.

Aspell was a magnificent exception to the above two: header in place,
comments fields used to explain strings, and the developer available to
answer queries. It's great when we can work together like that. :)

A translator needs information like anyone else, you know. <sobs into
her hankie>

(Long day.)

Thankyou for your help.

from Clytie (vi-VN, team/nhsm Gnome-vi)

Clytie Siddall--Renmark, in the Riverland of South Australia