Re: Different file lengths and line numbers (Re: Broken Spanish documentation)

[John Mandereau]

Le dimanche 26 août 2007 à 03:03 +0200, Francisco Vila a écrit :
> Yes, of course it does help. I used to view these details in the
> savannah web interface or in gitk

These interfaces are easier to use, but the command line is always
faster :-)

> 
> As you say, the question is which case works, but it's clear that in
> the originals there aren't any accented characters to lost :) so one
> can well be confident in that it works when in fact it doesn't.

Of course.

> 
> In 5f86d989... you have reformatted my two-line Spanish paragraph (a
> translation of the two-line English one) onto a four-line paragraph. 
> Note that Spanish language is more verbose than English (compare any
> manuals). Reformatting is fine and I know that long lines are not
> pretty. But, if the translated files do not have exactly the same
> paragraph in the very same line numbers of the ones in the originals,
> it is almost impossible to follow and locate the changes in the
> originals and update the translations. So, please let's think in a
> method of locating the cursor to the translated paragraph
> corresponding to a modification in the original, or let's keep the
> line numbers intact.
> 
Sorry for mangling line numbers in your translation, I wasn't aware of
this method.  We French translators prefer to have short lines, even if
the French translations have a greater number of lines.  Short lines
allow you to check the translation against the original side by side:

----------------
xxxx   | xxxx
French | English
xxxxx  | xxx
xxx    |
----------------

It's still easy to locate changes to be made in the translations by
looking for section titles, which are always in English.

I don't mind you keep using your method as long as we don't generate
Info pages of translated manuals; you (or rather an a batch script :-p)
will have to wrap all paragraphs to make the Spanish manual readable in
Info.

Cheers,
John