using gettext for .desktop translations

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 09:23:01PM +0100, Chusslove Illich wrote:
> > [: Jonathan Riddell :]
> > Currently .desktop translations are kept in-file rather than using gettext
> > .po/.mo files as every other translation does.

> Now, in my perfect world, everything would be dynamically translated through
> PO files: .desktop files, Docbook documentation, wiki pages,
> everything.

Groovy, sounds like we agree.

> Since perfection must be approached step by step, why not just do it now for
> .desktop files? Because, as both Pino and Kevin provided examples, we'd be
> doing something ad-hoc that would confuse random clients of .desktop files,
> even when they conform the .desktop file spec at Free Desktop. The proper
> way is then to first update .desktop spec, and then we can happily switch to
> dynamic PO-based translation for .desktop files.

There was a posting about this to the xdg list once upon a time but
since the maintainers of the .desktop spec have long since fallen off
the internet it didn't go anywhere.  So the process has to start here.

Jonathan