What about empty msgctxt?

[Chusslove Illich]

As it is now, if the code contains pgettext call with empty context, the
resulting POT will contain empty msgctxt field. Of course, code should not
use empty contexts, but it may happen occasionally; this will then confuse
PO processing tools which make no difference between no context and empty
context (which I find to be natural assumption, and simplifying APIs) until
the offending empty-context is removed from the code. (Unfortunatelly, not
speaking hypothetically -- a problem of this kind iced two unrelated PO
processors, and made some people loop trying to figure out what's going
on...)

So I'm wondering if empty contexts should be, and to what extent, prevented
already on the level of Gettext's own tools. I'd personally crack on empty
contexts hard: xgettext to issue warnings and not extract such calls at all,
and msgfmt and msgmerge to consider empty msgctxt field a fatal error (in
case xgettext was not used to extract POT).

-- 
Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)

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