Re: What about empty msgctxt?

[Chusslove Illich]

> [: Bruno Haible :]
> The gettext documentation [...] says "Note that an empty CONTEXT string
> and an absent 'msgctxt' line do not mean the same thing." [...] The spec
> is clear about it; [...] the choice of the semantics of the context is a
> decision that the programmer has to make. I don't see a good enough reason
> to make this decision harder by disallowing empty contexts. (We have
> enough trouble already with empty msgids.)

I missed to observe in the documentation that distinction of empty and no
context is specifically considered, leaving use of empty contexts at
programmer's discretion.

>> [: Chusslove Illich :]
>> [...] [empty msgctxt] will confuse PO processing tools which make no
>> difference between no context and empty context (which I find to be
>> natural assumption [...] a problem of this kind iced two unrelated PO
>> processors
>
> [: Bruno Haible :]
> Please have them fixed.

Then there's some fixing and reporting to do.

But let me shift the question from spec to policy: do you personally see a
use for empty contexts, when they might be advantageous as opposed to no
context? Because in KDE repository we deploy code checking scripts, among
which one for i18n, and now I'm in doubt whether a check for empty contexts,
requiring their removal, should be added or not.

-- 
Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)

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