Gratuitous header changes by l10n-sync
As it was recently time for making a lot of translation uploads, I
have received and read several comments about the so-called gratuitous
changes induced by l10n-sync on individual packages PO files.
Indeed, this is probably not the best consequence of the use of such
master file, for sure. This part again needs more work, if possible,
for avoiding these changes.
The problem here may have several origins:
-differences between gettext tools on the translators machines and
those on the machine l10n-sync is run on
-differences between gettext tools between the different machines
l10n-sync is run on
-Cosmetic changes by translators to headers only
A very frequent reason for changes without real content change are
small differences in the way gettext tools handle wrapping of msgid's
and msgstr's. This does not always occur similarly, depending on the
version of tools. This is what I have noticed between woody and
sarge/sid machines for instance.
Other frequent changes are "cosmetic" header changes. For instance, if
a translator changes the Last-Translator or Language-Team fields. Such
change is spread out over PO files and there, the PO-Revision-Date is
modified...
I have no complete solution to all this. I will try to have l10n-sync
avoiding changing the PO-Revision-Date when changing only
comments...but that needs carefulness because, for instance, fuzzy
markers *are* comments....
More help and ideas in l10n-sync maintenance are welcome.
The goal is first changing PO-Revision-Date *only* when there are
content changes. We would need a kind of msgdiff utility for this...
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