using gettext for .desktop translations

[Pino Toscano]

Alle sabato 12 dicembre 2009, Jonathan Riddell ha scritto:
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 04:48:38PM +0100, Pino Toscano wrote:
> > Translations from where? Which format?
> > If tomorrow I install eg a GNOME application in my KDE, where will the
> > KDE menu look for the translations of the entries of the .desktop file of
> > the application?
> 
> From the application's .po file.  The .desktop file contains a line
> with the translation catalogue name.

Right, so when showing e.g. the Edu menu, the menu will need to load approx. 
22000 messages in memory? Sum up other applications like kmail (~2500 
messages), kopete (~3500), and see how the number of messages which needs to 
be loaded just to show some descriptions raises a lot. And this is for 
information already available in the _same_ place (the .desktop file) where 
you read the English versions.
Are you really sure this is worth the overhead? I don't think so.

> > The same applies of course in the other way round, and in general
> > for any XDG menu implementation. This is als why IMO having translations
> > in .desktop files (not DE specific) is a good solution so far.
> 
> There's nothing desktop specific about gettext, it's used all over the
>  place.

Not sure why you thought I implied the opposite (which I didn't).

> > And if the application does not use gettext at all for its translations
> > (for example with Qt-only or Java applications)?
> 
> For their .desktop files they can fallback to the old in-file
> translation method.

Right, overhead++ and confusion++ (two systems instead of a single system 
which work fine?)

-- 
Pino Toscano
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