Re: [PATCH] Make a colon translatable

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 11 2022, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Julien Palard <julien@palard.fr> writes:
>
>> In french we use a no-break space before colon, so with formatting
>> like:
>>
>>     printf("... %s: ...", _("some string"))
>>
>> We can't cleanly add our no-break space, so I think:
>>
>>     printf("... %s ...", _("some string:"))
>
> Sorry, but I do not quite buy this.  The above is a representative
> example of what we call "sentence lego", which is what we absolutely
> want to avoid, isn't it?
>
> We'd rather want to see
>
> 	printf_like_function(_("Use 'git %s' ...", "string"));
>
> when "string" is something that should not be translated to begin
> with (e.g. "add" to form "git add"), and different languages can use
> different conventions for quoting the command name (a translation
> may want to use something other than single-quotes, for example).
>
> And in a less optimal case,
>
> 	printf_like_function(_("%s: ...", _("string")));
>
> would be needed, when "string" is something that is to be translated
> (e.g. a phrase used as a label, like "Untracked files" in the code
> this patch touches).  I think the case you have is the latter one.

You're right, but wt-status.c is sentence lego galore, and that's been a
TODO since the i18n effort was started.

It's particularly hard to peel it apart, and doing so would require
e.g. having translators translate a string with embedded color formats,
or even git-for-each-ref embedded %(if...) formats.

But in lieu of that I don't see a reson for not taking this much more
narrow change, since it solves a practical issue for a major language...

>> diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
>> index d33f9272b7..ef0c276c3d 100644
>> --- a/wt-status.c
>> +++ b/wt-status.c
>> @@ -248,7 +248,7 @@ static void wt_longstatus_print_other_header(struct wt_status *s,
>>  					     const char *how)
>>  {
>>  	const char *c = color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s);
>> -	status_printf_ln(s, c, "%s:", what);
>> +	status_printf_ln(s, c, "%s", what);
>
> I.e. this one is better handled by
>
> 	status_printf_ln(s, c, _("%s:"), what);
>
> as _(...) in C-locale is original-language centric, where we want
> the label to be <phrase> immediately followed by a colon.  And that
> allows French translation to have nbsp before the colon.

In this case I think the change as suggested is better, translators get
zero context from "%s:", whereas "Untracked files:" being status output
is immediately obvious.

>>  	if (s->show_untracked_files) {
>> -		wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->untracked, _("Untracked files"), "add");
>> +		wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->untracked, _("Untracked files:"), "add");
>
> Then this <phrase>, to be used in the label above, can be without colon.
>
>>  		if (s->show_ignored_mode)
>> -			wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->ignored, _("Ignored files"), "add -f");
>> +			wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->ignored, _("Ignored files:"), "add -f");

It's a good rule of thumb to give translators the "whole thing", in this
case that's a heading, so despite other issues with lego'd "status"
output this particular string is following best-practices after this
change by Julien.

His commit message also doesn't mention it, but for existing "headings"
we already do this, e.g.:

    status_printf_ln(s, c, _("Changes to be committed:"));
    status_printf_ln(s, c, _("Changes not staged for commit:"));

etc., grep for status_printf_ln.*" in that file, so this is making
things consistent with that other code.