Re: automake po / pot file integration: when to merge the PO files?

[Yavor Doganov]

В Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:32:54 +0100, Roger Leigh написа:

> I'd like to suggest that the best way to tackle the problem is to
> simply stop generating the source file/line number comments by
> default; I'm already doing this in some of my projects by adding
> "--no-location" to XGETTEXT_OPTIONS in po/Makevars.  It's a massive
> improvement.

Improvement for you as a maintaner, probably.  It's a massive disaster
for translators.

> A question I have is "what purpose does having the line number and
> source file serve"?

Automatically jumping to the source.  That's invaluable.

The only case where locations do not work (and do not make sense) is
for XML gibberish like .glade/.ui files.  The filename is still
useful, though -- I'm using it to open the file with Glade, and click
around to find the message I'm interested in.

> And if the original source file(s) for a string need to be found,
> grep(1) is pretty fast.

Try this with a non-trivial (or even trivial) package, you'd be
annoyed pretty quickly.

> At least for me, the translators get mailed the po file, and never
> look at the source, so it's not of *any practical benefit* to anyone

Yes, unfortunately these days many translators take the "black box"
approach -- not only they never look at the source (which leads to
amusing translations with horrible quality), they don't even compile
and run the program.  That's not a valid reason to cripple the .po
files, though, making the life significantly harder for those who take
care to test their translations properly.

Source code availability *is* a prerequisite for a decent translation,
and the locations of the messages are a major convenience (with a
capable PO editor, of course).