Re: [PATCH] proper indentation in merge conflict menu

On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 06:17:17PM -0400, Karl Fogel wrote:
> Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's slow down and think about this carefully.
>
> I'm not sure r31600 is a generally applicable solution. After all, a

It's nevertheless fine for 1.5.0 as I only touched a PO file. Also this
message changed in trunk so we can slowly find a independent fix in trunk.

> translation might be longer instead of shorter.

You mean shorter instead of longer. In this case we could add additional
spaces to the translation of "Select: ".

> Instead, perhaps we have to write multiline prompts in a way that allows
> translations to work regardless of word length. I don't think counting
> characters is the way to go, unless there's no other solution.

Don't understand what's wrong with counting ... But it may indeed result
in clumsy code.

> Do you know of any other places in Subversion that have this problem?

There are really many strings which need to be tested live (not just by
proofreading the PO file). Consider e.g. help messages which often
have an indentation of 31 characters. Even if these 31 spaces are handled
separately the remaining text on this line should no longer than 80-31.
If a string is longer it needs to be wrapped and has to respect the
indendation.

Compare e.g.
$ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 svn help diff

 -r [--revision] ARG : ARG (peut aussi être une étendue ARG1:ARG2)
                     L'argument d'une révision peut être :
                       NUMÉRO numéro de la révision
                       '{' DATE '}' révision disponible à cette date

 --depth ARG : limite l'opétioan à cette profondeur (depth empty/files/
               immediates/infinity) en argument

Such help messages use strings such as

#: ../svn/main.c:214
msgid "use ARG as diff command"
msgstr "utilise ARG comme commande diff"

and it is not easy to recognise that a longer translation has to be:

msgstr "long translation of \"use ARG as diff\n"
" command\" continued on a second line"

Jens

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Received on 2008-06-06 09:52:43 CEST