Re: texinfo-6.7.90 pretest

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 04:37:52PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 02:51:51PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 02, 2021 at 01:31:37PM +0100, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hello Gavin,
> > > 
> > > Op 23-02-2021 om 22:12 schreef Gavin Smith:
> > > > The first pretest for the next Texinfo release has been uploaded to
> > > > 
> > > > https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.7.90.tar.xz
> > > 
> > > In the POT file I see a large new string (pasted at the end of this 
> > > email).
> > > Such enormous pieces of text are annoying to translate: 1) the translator
> > > cannot see msgid and msgstr in a single, small movement of the eye, and 2)
> > > translation memory is not of any help.  What's more: if ever an option is
> > > added or removed or changed, the /whole/ translation of this message is
> > > invalidated, wasting a bunch of work.  And, in such a changed big message,
> > > it is hard for the translator to find out /what/ was changed.
> > 
> > OK thank you for checking over the POT file and finding the problem.  I
> > will look into what happened.  I have in fact never knowingly made any
> > changes or done any work on pod2texi, or paid it any attention at all.
> > I'm guessing that its strings were never translated before but now this
> > string has been included automatically in the POT file.
> 
> Indeed, it is what happened, I do not know why they were not picked up
> before.  As for the reason for the enormous size, is that I had
> understood the reverse, ie that it was easier to translate big chunks
> because it is easier to rephrase for a language, but I guess that for
> options it is not right.  I could modify to do more like in texi2any
> where the translated messages are per group of option (and I don't
> remember who did that, I do not think that it is I).

If you're willing to make the changes I'll wait for you to do it.  All
of Benno's recommendations are good.  I'd thought there'd be something in
the GNU Coding Standards about this, but apparently there isn't:

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dhelp.html#g_t_002d_002dhelp