On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 02:24:41PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: > > I don't know enough about gettext - am I assuming correctly that in > > the .mo file, the English translation is replaced with a checksum or > > similar, so you do not need to store the complete English translation? > > Gettext normally uses the entire untranslated string as the key in the .mo > file. This has many advantages when dealing with translation of strings in > programs, where the untranslated string is actually present in the program > source, and this is a big reason the GNU project favors gettext over catgets > systems found on other Unices. It makes less sense in the case of package > descriptions, however, because we're effectively doing two lookups -- first to > find the English description in Packages.gz using the package name and version > as a key, then to find the translated description in the .mo file using the > English description as a key. yes, you must two lookups. First in the package db (normal in the menory) and (if LANG is set) make a second lookup with gettext. But this not a big problem, or is there a problem? If you put the translated text only in the db, and you don't use the english text as key (like gettext) you get maybe outdated translation. And better a untranslated text than a wrong translation. > > For the binary package, I don't know... - Gnome and KDE do include all > > translations, and I think it's easier to handle. Additionally, disc > > space is really cheap these days, so maybe it would be better just to > > include all the descriptions, too. > > I think it does belong in the binary package; if not, I'm not sure why we > would want it in the source package at all. I believe translated descriptions > have just as much reason for inclusion in the binary package's control file > (or in a functional equivalent) as the rest of the informational stuff that's > in there. > > If translated Description: fields in binary packages are not important, then > why do we currently have the untranslated Description: in the control file? yes, If we add the translation in the source, we should also add it in the normal deb. Gruss Grisu -- Michael Bramer - a Debian Linux Developer http://www.debian.org PGP: finger grisu@db.debian.org -- Linux Sysadmin -- Use Debian Linux "Nicht geschehene Taten ziehen oft einen erstaunlichen Mangel an Folgen nach sich." -- S.J. Lec
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