Bug#147618: gettext: comment generation should be complete (fwd)

[Santiago Vila]

Hello.

This is the last bug from Mark Eichin I didn't forward yet.
[ Sorry for doing it so late ].

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 03:12:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark W. Eichin <address@hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <address@hidden>
Subject: Bug#147618: gettext: comment generation should be complete

Package: gettext
Version: 0.11.1-0
Severity: wishlist

The --copyright-holder=STRING option sets the copyright name in the
foo.pot header comments; it doesn't set the year, perhaps that could
be automatically set to the current year [as POT-Creation-Date is...]

Likewise if there isn't a complete merging mechanism, having options
to fill in the tokens that are now "PACKAGE", "SOME DESCRIPTIVE
TITLE", "YEAR", "PACKAGE VERSION", "CHARSET", and possibly "FIRST
AUTHOR" from the xgettext commandline (or some template file) would be
helpful.

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To this message I replied:

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> The --copyright-holder=STRING option sets the copyright name in the
> foo.pot header comments; it doesn't set the year, perhaps that could
> be automatically set to the current year [as POT-Creation-Date is...]

Doing so would be wrong, IMHO, since not every translated .po file
will have their translation finished in the same year.

> Likewise if there isn't a complete merging mechanism, having options
> to fill in the tokens that are now "PACKAGE", "SOME DESCRIPTIVE
> TITLE", "YEAR", "PACKAGE VERSION", "CHARSET", and possibly "FIRST
> AUTHOR" from the xgettext commandline (or some template file) would be
> helpful.

Is is the translators who have to provide this information in the .po files.
The .pot file is supposed to be a template full of YEAR-type names to be
replaced by their real values (in the .po files).

May I close this bug or do you think the manual isn't clear enough?
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and he answered:

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> Doing so would be wrong, IMHO, since not every translated .po file
> will have their translation finished in the same year.

Finished isn't relevant, I don't think - just worked on during.  (If
it should be the last-year-touched for other reasons, instead of "all
years touched", po-mode should be doing that :-) But the extracted
msgid strings have a copyright year from the source code, at very
least, so there is a value to set from, even if it needs manual
intervention.

However, I did figure out how to merge into .pot files without
destroying this each time, so maybe "just edit the .pot file" is the
right answer for YEAR.

> Is is the translators who have to provide this information in the .po files.

Oh, CHARSET is the destination one, not the source one?  That leaves
"SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE", "PACKAGE", and "YEAR" [copyright] as
definitely things that should be set in the template, though... but
again, now that I don't have to enter them every time, I no longer
have a problem with using "emacs" as the interface to this :-)

(so: I still think these should be set in template, but if xgettext
isn't going to do it, it doesn't matter to me anymore and you can
close the bug.)
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I must add now that the "SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE" thing is often
written in the same language as the .po file itself, and the copyright
YEAR is the year the translation was finished, so it has not to be in
sync among all .po files and does not make much sense to set it in the
template.

So, IMHO, the only field suitable to be set in the template would
be "PACKAGE", if any...

Thanks.