Re: gettext feature request

[Chet Ramey]

On 7/27/21 4:40 PM, Jean-Jacques Brucker wrote:
> Le 27/07/2021 à 16:39, Chet Ramey a écrit :
> > That's not a good name. It provides no insight about the option or its
> > purpose. Maybe something like `quote_translation'.
> You are right. And I was sorely lacking in imagination.

How about `noexpand_translation'?

> IMHO bash already suffers of having too many options. And using, or not, 
> one of those often breaks compatibility.

It's not really a matter of having too many options, as long as the
defaults are good and preserve backwards compatibility. That way, people
who want the new behavior can opt in, and people who want no changes don't
have to change anything. If, at some point, it makes sense to change the
default behavior, it's a matter of changing the default value of that
option, which still allows users who want the old behavior a way to get it.

Now, changing that default behavior, no matter what the reason or how long
the option has been there, is always going to present problems. But
sometimes you do it.


> Finally there is an other and maybe better solution, by implementing one or 
> two more variables:
>
>   * TEXTCDOMAIN (or TEXTQUOTEDOMAIN): if set, enable `quote_translation'
>     feature (like TEXTDOMAIN does for actual translation features).
>   * And maybe TEXTCDOMAINDIR (or TEXTQUOTEDOMAINDIR): (like
>     TEXTDOMAINDIR does for actual translation features).

Did you just invent these variable names? Or are they actually used for
something right now? I prefer not to have optional behavior depend on
whether a variable exists. Sometimes you can't avoid it, such as when you
need a way to indicate more than two possible values, but this isn't one
of those cases.


--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/