Re: Texinfo translation error, texinfo_document domain

[Bruno Haible]

Hi TeXinfo maintainers,

This exchange is from the French translators mailing list:

Jean-Charles Malahieude wrote:
> Le 28/10/2022 à 19:42, Gavin Smith a écrit :
> > In the translations for 'texinfo_document', fr.po:
> > 
> > [...]
> > #: tp/Texinfo/Transformations.pm:597
> > msgid " --- The Detailed Node Listing ---"
> > msgstr " --- Liste d@'etaill@'ee des n@oeuds ---"
> > 
> > I believe n@oeuds should be n@oe{}uds as otherwise there is an error
> > about an unknown command @oeuds.
> > 
> > I will not edit the file myself and wait for it to be updated.
> 
> New and corrected file uploaded to the FTP and accepted.
> 
> Cheers,
> --
> Jean-Charles

It sounds wrong to expect translators to use TeXinfo syntax for
non-ASCII characters, for three reasons:

1) Translator tools support the common (state-free) charset encodings,
   namely UTF-8, ISO-8859-*, and so on. Not TeX with \, not TeXinfo with
   @, not ISO-2022-*. PO files that expect TeXinfo syntax deny translators
   from the ability to use their native input methods.

   I guess this is the reason why you don't see Chinese, Hindi, Vietnamese,
   Armenian, etc. translations for texinfo/po_document/*.po.

2) Even for translators who are familiar with the TeXinfo syntax, the
   TeXinfo syntax allows for mistakes like the one reported above, that
   could not happen if UTF-8 was used for the encoding, in the translator's
   workflow.

3) This syntax reduces the functionality available in msgfmt. For example, in
   pt_BR.po there is the message

     #: tp/Texinfo/Convert/DocBook.pm:1088
     #, perl-brace-format
     msgid "see section ``{section_name}'' in @cite{{book}}"
     msgstr "veja se@,{c}@~{a}o ``{section_name}'' em @cite{{book}}"

   If this message was being checked by 'msgfmt -c', it would report an error,
   because the translation has more variables ({c}, {a}, {section_name},
   {book}) than the msgid. Thus I conclude that you have not enabled the '-c'
   option of msgfmt, and thus the — would-be useful — perl-brace-format
   argument checking does not happen.

I would strongly suggest to request UTF-8 encoded PO files from the
translators and convert them to TeXinfo syntax inside the TeXinfo build
system.

Bruno