Very long message strings in .po file rkwardplugins.po

[Jaap Woldringh]

First, let me introduce myself:

I am the Dutch translator of rkward, and am now translating the 
rkwardplugin.po file.

Several of the messages are very tedious to translate, but that's in the 
game when translating a handbook. I am not complaining about that, 
though many messages could have been written less longwindedly. Clearer 
for the reader, easier to  translate. Fortunately for me, is that now 
often I can translate the English sentences into Dutch in shorter, 
sometimes much shorter, sentences.

What I am complaining of is messages like message #195 in said .po file, 
which for your convenience, and as an illustration of what I am talking 
about, I copy here, between ========- lines, and of which you don't have 
to read all lines, of course (just count them):

=============

<!DOCTYPE rkhelp>\n
<document>\n
         <summary>\n
In this section, you'll put some short, very basic information about what
the plugin does.\n
This section will always show up on the very top of the help page.\n
         </summary>\n
\n
         <usage>\n
The usage section may contain a little more practical information. It does
not explain all\n
the settings in detail (that's done in the "settings" section), however.\n
\n
To start a new paragraph, insert an empty line, as shown above.\n
This line, in contrast, will be in the same paragraph.\n
\n
In all sections you can insert some simple HTML code, such as <b>
bold</b> or\n
<i>italic</i> text. Please keep formatting to the minimum
needed, however.\n
\n
The usage section is always the second section shown in a help page.\n
         </usage>\n
\n
         <section id="sectionid" title="Generic section" short_title=
"Generic">\n
If you need to, you can add additional sections between the usage and
settings sections.\n
However, usually, you will not need this while documenting plugins. The "id
"-attribute\n
provides an anchor point to jump to this section from the navigation menu.
The "short_title"\n
attribute provides a short title to use in the navigation bar. This is
optional, by default\n
the main "title" will be used both as a heading to the section, and as the
link name in the\n
navigation bar.\n
\n
In any section you may want to insert links to further information. You do
this by adding\n
\n
<link href="URL">link name</link>\n
\n
Where URL could be an external link such as http://rkward.kde.org .\n
Several special URLs are supported in the help pages:\n
\n
<link href="rkward://page/path/page_id"/>\n
\n
This links to a top level rkward help page (not for a plugin).\n
\n
<link href="rkward://component/[namespace/]component_id"/>\n
\n
This links to the help page of another plugin. The [namespace/] part may be
omitted\n
(in this case, rkward is assumed as the standard namespace, e.g.:\n
<link href="rkward://component/import_spss"/> or\n
<link href="rkward://component/rkward/import_spss"/> are
equivalent).\n
The component_id is the same that you specified in the <link linkend=
"pluginmap">&pluginmap;</link>.\n
\n
<link href="rkward://rhelp/rfunction"/>\n
\n
Links to the &r; help page on "rfunction".\n
\n
Note that the link names will be generated automatically for these types of
links.\n
         </section>\n
\n
         <settings>\n
                 <caption id="id_of_tab_or_frame"/>\n
                 <setting id="id_of_element">\n
Description of the GUI element identified by the given id\n
                 </setting>\n
                 <setting id="id_of_elementb" title="description">\n
Usually the title of the GUI element will be extracted from the\n
<link linkend="mainxml">XML definition of the plugin</link>,
automatically. However,\n
for some GUI elements, this description may not be enough to identify them,
reliably.\n
In this case, you can add an explicit title using the "title" attribute.\n
                 </setting>\n
                 <setting id="id_of_elementc">\n
Description of the GUI element identified by "id_of_elementc"\n
                 </setting>\n
                 [...]\n
         </settings>\n
\n
         <related>\n
The related section typically just contains some links, such as:\n
\n
<ul>\n
         <li><link href="rkward://rhelp/mean"/></li>\n
         <li><link href="rkward://rhelp/median"/></li>\n
         <li><link href="rkward://component/related_component"/>
</li>\n
</ul>\n
         </related>\n
\n
         <technical>\n
The technical section (optional, always last) may contain some technical
details of the plugin\n
implementation, which are of interest only to RKWard developers. This is
particularly relevant\n
for plugins that are designed to be embedded in many other plugins, and
could detail, which\n
options are available to customize the embedded plugin, and which code
sections contain which\n
R code.\n
         </technical>\n
</document>

=============

That is all one mesage!

A message like this one is almost untranslatable (translator getting 
lost all the time), and  a translator's nightmare, and I strongly advise 
you (or: I beg you) to divide messages like this one into smaller chunks.

Of course a translator can do this him/her self, copying a message like 
that into a wordprocessor, dividing it into translatable chunks, and 
after translating copying them back into the .po file (and checking all 
the line-ends).
But a translator should be facilitated to do his/her job as comfortably 
as possible, if only to let the translations be as good as possible.

Thanks for reading this, and I hope that you can do something about 
this, even when a message like this one is included automatically. I do 
not complain only for myself, but also for the tens, or even hundreds, 
of translators all over the world who are confronted with messages like 
this monster.

Greetings from Holland, sincerely,

Jaap Woldringh
Dutch translator for KDE