Re: po header to decide about word wrapping (?)

[Bruno Haible]

Hello,

Santiago Vila writes:
> Hideki Yamane replies:
>
>   debconf-updatepo works "msgmerge -U foo.po template.pot",
>   but "-U" or "--update" option doesn't work about word wrapping in
>   its po file :(
>   Just "msgmerge ja.po templates.pot -o ja.po" works fine.
>
> Then Denis Barbier replies:
>
>  I understand now, thanks for explaining.  But the problem is that most
>  languages prefer reformatting lines, because it is easier to track
>  changes.  I would like to reassign this bugreport to gettext, and
>  ask that a header field be added to PO files so that translators
>  can decide that their files should not be reformatted.
>  Do you agree with this approach?
>
> and finally Hideki Yamane writes:
>
> It's nice that translators can decide to do or not.
> I'll reassign this bug to gettext.

It is not clear to me what exactly this is about. May I ask for for
precision?

- Whether word wrapping _inside the strings_ is done by the translator
  (i.e. the translator inserts \n here and there) or whether it is done by
  the application (such as a HTML browser or another text rendering engine),
  depends on the package/domain, not on the translator. The translator
  can guess whether she needs to insert \n by looking whether \n are
  present in the msgid.

- Word wrapping outside the strings is merely a presentation form of the
  PO file. The "msgmerge -U" command compares the string contents of
  the PO files, ignoring the presentation. It can therefore happen that when
  you pass a PO file with line breaks and the PO file to be updated has no
  line breaks, no line breaks will be inserted.
  Other than that, the --width option of msgcat, msgmerge etc. controls
  the line wrapping when writing a PO file. The translator who wants to
  have line wrapping to, say, 80 columns can enforce this by running the
  PO file through "msgcat --width=80".

  What is the workflow in the Debian tools setting? If a translator wants to
  have line wrapping enabled when she receives a PO file, I'd suggest that
  you introduce an environment variable that the Debian tools use.

Bruno