[I18n-sig] Re: pygettext.py extraction of docstrings
Barry A. Warsaw
barry@wooz.org
Sun, 12 Aug 2001 23:17:37 -0400
Hi Francois! I'm Cc'ing Bruno on this message because I think he's
the current gettext maintainer. Sorry if I'm mistaken...
>>>>> "FP" =3D=3D Fran=E7ois Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>> Then again, it doesn't say that #. comments are reserved. It
>> basically just says that #-whitespace comments are reserved for
>> the translators.
FP> You might consider that they are all reserved.
>> I'm happy to switch it, but I'd really like to have a reference
>> I can point to to short-circuit any further discussion. Even a
>> mailing list archive url would be fine.
FP> If I remember well, `#.' are for textual comments written by
FP> the program maintainer, meant to be read by translators, and
FP> derived automatically at POT creation time. They usually come
FP> from specially formatted comments in the C sources.
FP> `#-whitespace' are for textual comments also meant to be read
FP> by various translators, but written by translators themselves.
This makes sense. It would be good to make this a bit clearer in the
"Format of PO Files" section of the GNU gettext manual.
FP> `#,' are for programmatic flags. The idea was to use these
FP> parsimoniously, keeping track of possible flag definitions and
FP> consequences. I do not know how far these are recognized and
FP> validated by `msgfmt'. Best would be to coordinate with the
FP> current `gettext' maintainer before creating new ones. Unless
FP> he declares they are now for free use?
A while back I was convinced to switch the `docstring' flag to #, for
pygettext. Perhaps Bruno can add some information on pygettext.py in
the GNU gettext manual? I think the following would be of interest:
- Mention the existence of pygettext.py for extracting translatable
strings in Python.
- Point to Python's gettext module documentation for more details on
i18n'ing Python programs. This should be a fairly stable url:
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-gettext.html
- Document `docstring' as a legal #,-style flag. It probably only has
meaning in Python, but may be useful in other scripting languages.
Think of it roughly equivalent to Emacs-Lisp docstrings (in fact,
they were the inspiration for Python docstrings back in '94 at the
1st Python workshop!)
- Make sure that the other GNU gettext tools recognize the docstring
flag, in whatever way is meaningful (I'm not sure what would be
useful or not... ;).
Thanks. BTW, for my purposes, pygettext.py's -X/--no-docstrings
switch does the job perfectly, if a bit inelegantly.
-Barry