Re: Website translation

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 05:15:11PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Ah yes, I believe the issue you raised in that message (“lego
> translations”) is not addressed by Florian’s approach.
> 
> However, the #_ form you propose doesn’t quite work either because
> xgettext in its current form wouldn’t be able to extract it.
> 
> sirgazil proposed a solution that’s similar to format strings to address
> that:
> 
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2017-12/msg00071.html
> 
> Worth a try!
> 

So:

1) We could put everything in a single string, which works with
xgettext and is somewhat easy to use for translators but not quite
Scheme-like.

2) We could use something like sirgazil’s format string solution.  It
works with xgettext, but is not nice for translators.

I wrote in 
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2017-12/msg00069.html>:
> This interleaving is like a format string and is common in
> applications, but it separates the value of ~SPORT~ from the context
> in which it should be translated.

3) We could write our own PO file writer and MO file reader and use it
with either Christopher’s lego translation and sirgazil’s format
strings to use whatever format we want for developers and translators.

sirgazil’s format strings could probably be used now and improved with
a custom PO/MO reader/writer later on.

The MO file format is well documented at
<https://www.gnu.org/s/gettext/manual/html_node/MO-Files.html#MO-Files>
but “it is expectable that MO file format will evolve or change over
time”.

Such a custom reader/writer could be part of Gettext or could be a
separate library.  I am not going to write it though.

Regards,
Florian