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List:       kde-i18n
Subject:    important!
From:       Stephan Kulow <coolo () kde ! org>
Date:       1998-09-30 21:35:29
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Hi!

I changed the meaning of kde.pot and this has big consequences!
Til now it was the template file for kdelibs, but this got too
dangerous, because the more strings are in this file, the bigger
is the danger, that translations are ambigious.

One interesting example is the word "May". It's the long form
and the short form for the name of the month may and it was just
as both in kdelibs (in the file selector and the date selector).
So, it was impossible for Esperanto to give the word May a
meaning. Interestingly enough in German both is Mai and I haven't
thought about it at all. I wonder, what it means in other languages,
but I'm too lazy to look in the translations :)

That brought me to the conclusion, that it may work to keep
this in the right way in kdelibs, but since kde.pot is also
used to exclude translations from other applications, the things
get too messy, since such problems wouldn't even noticed until
you see it in the application. 

So, kde.pot now only contains the messages, that we put in
kdelibs/po/texts.cpp. Those are also excluded from other
application templates. kdelibs.pot is now, what kde.pot used
to be - the template to translate. 

So, for you nothing changes, you still get the $LANG.po and
translate, what you find, it's just the template name, that
has changed. BUTTH: the applications may contain more untranslated
words now, because they excluded before. But we can't avoid
this, when the word has more than one meaning (and this happens
quite often). But if you find a word, where you're sure, that
it has only one meaning and can only be used in one context,
then we can add it to text.cpp and it will be excluded next 
time. 

The biggest problems are adjectives, since they can have several
translations in Italian for example depending on the context
(when I remember right mino, mina, mini for min. [God, how I
hate everything that looks like Latin ;-)]). Those you will
find very often, so don't be suprised.

Ah! I will run msgmerge on all application translations, so
the translations currently in kdelibs will be present later
in the application translations too, so there is no problem
with the running applications. The applications will be
translated anyway, since for the actual translation of KDE
only kdelibs.pot is important (and what you translated out
of it).

Ok, further questions? Discussions? I know, that the fact,
if a word has more than a meaning, is something for studied
linugisticians (guess, the word is wrong :), but I hope, that
we all together can find the problematic words.

Thanks, Stephan

-- 
NOTE: condom may only be used with a hard disk. condom will 
terminate abnormally with exit code -1 if used with a floppy 
disk (see DIAGNOSTICS below).

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