[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Identifiers instead of English strings

[From: Kalle Vahlman]

On 2/17/06, Murray Cumming <murrayc at murrayc.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 15:25 +0200, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> > On 2/17/06, David D. Hagood <wowbagger at sktc.net> wrote:
> > > Murray Cumming wrote:
> > > > Is there some explanation somewhere about the use of these strange
> > > > identifiers instead of English strings in the maemo source code. What is
> > > > the advantage?
> > > >
> > >
> > > Internationalization (I18N) - the strings are kept in a set of  separate
> > > files, one for each language. The code then accesses that file to get
> > > the string. Thus, you create a new file, and suddenly your app speaks
> > > Spanish.
> >
> > That would be possible for normal language (usually english) too, no
> > need for special IDs.
> >
> > AFAIK the id's are there for few reasons, one being that any
> > mistypings or phrase changes in the original version won't mean a
> > change for all the translations already done. This would be bad if
> > there's 10 translations, all handled by different people (as I'm sure
> > open source translators know ;).
>
> String freezes should fix this problem. And in extreme cases, you can,
> for instance, change the English U.S. translation, and leave the string
> wrong in the C locale.

Of course, if the UI's and strings are ok and approved in the fully
featured and complete design documents few months or even weeks before
the project release date.

How many of those do you think will evaluate to "TRUE" at the same
time in the real corporate world?-)

> A change of meaning in an original _should_ be translated.

The id should be bind to the situation, not the message (thus it won't
change if the message changes from "network error" to "no
connections").

> > Also the code side benefits as you can quickly add a string called
> > "this_app_warns_about_this" instead of waiting for the real and
> > perfect sentence to be thought up, since it can be done after the code
> > is already done (without changes to it).
>
> I can put "this_app_warns_about_this" in regular source code, and the
> effect will be the same. It doesn't help me if, when I think up the
> correct text, I have to put it in a separate file instead of in the
> source code. Why would we want to not change the source code?

Costs money. Integration. Translations can be separate packages, not
related to the binary pakcage in any other way than those ids.

And yes, if *you* think up the correct text, *you* can compile it
yourself, and probably even update the translations too if it's only a
typo. But that's not really the case here, the text doesn't come from
the dev, the translations even less.

Remember, this is not just a hobby project that two people code at.
It's (also ;) a real product and has all the baggage that brings...

--
Kalle Vahlman, zuh at iki.fi
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