[Bug-gnulib] version-etc, AUTHORS, WRITTEN_BY

[Jim Meyering]

I've vacillated on this enough already, so want to
make sure I'm not missing anything.

Paul,

I've reread a couple of your messages on this thread and don't
see too much in the way of reasons not to use version_etc2.
You did mention that some names would need to be translated,
like that of François, but can't we just do this?

  #define AUTHORS _("F. Pinard"), "Whoever Else"

Of course, there's the one of `simplicity'.
And I don't really like the `and others' kludge that
would end up omitting the 11th and subsequent names.
But so far, no client of this module lists more than five names.
Nobody mentioned code size, and Bruno's change does bloat
version-etc.o a little, but I don't think that's worth worrying about.

> anyway, as I don't use version-etc in the applications that I'm the
> principal maintainer for -- partly because of this problem, partly for
> other minor reasons, e.g. I prefer using a copyright msgid like
> _("Copyright (C) %d Free Software Foundation, Inc.\n") that doesn't
> need to be retranslated every year.

I thought there was an edict (legal reasons?) saying that we should not
mark that string for translation.  Hence this comment in version-etc.c:

  char* version_etc_copyright =
    /* Do *not* mark this string for translation.  */
    "Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.";

FWIW, there's a rule in Makefile.maint that reminds me to
change it each year.

I really want to be done with this, once and for all :-)