Subject: Remove German messages?

From: "Jakson A. Aquino" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 07:37:12 -0300

Hello!

Some German messages in the source code are either outdated
or untranslated. It's unproductive to write strings in two
languages simultaneously. It's also a potential cause of
errors, even for German programmers, because they have to
remember of updating the German string whenever the English
one is changed. In my case, because I can't write in German,
when I change an English message, I can't update the German
one. Differently of what happens with the use gettext, if a
message becomes outdated, there is no easy way of
identifying it latter. 

Unless there is some person interested in maintaining the
German messages inside the source code updated, I think it's
better to remove them from the source code. Does anyone has
objections? If not, I can remove the messages in the next
days.

Best,

Jakson

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From: Andreas Beyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:06:15 +0200

I fully agree. I introduced the mechanism with the macros for dual 
languages. Before that time, statist was completely German. The reasons 
that I didn't use gettext were (1) it was more simple to implement and 
(2) gettext was not supported on all platforms at that time. But I 
always had the future use of gettext in mind.

Andreas

-- 
Dr. Andreas Beyer
[email-masked]
www.fli-leibniz.de/~beyer

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From: Bernhard Reiter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:26:15 +0200

> objections? If not, I can remove the messages in the next

No objection,
just an addition for completeness:

Most of the problems could also be solved if
we could just create the german po file directly out of
the source code.
So the alternatives to maintain this would be to write
a script doing just that.

	Bernhard

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From: "Jakson A. Aquino" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:45:21 -0300

Hi Bernhard,

> a script doing just that.

I think that the extraction of the German strings directly
from the source code is just one step of a longer process.
The steps that I have in mind are:

(1) Identify what German strings in the source code are
    outdated in relation with their English counterparts.

(2) Translate and/or correct these messages in the source
    code.

(3) Run the script to extract the German and English
    messages and put then in the po file.

Probably, the step 3 is the easiest. I think it can be
solved with gettext + grep.  Anyway, it's simpler to
translate a po file using poedit than to do the translation
directly inside the source code, because poedit checks
immediately whether we did any spell or printf mistake. One
advantage of translating directly in the source code would
be that the messages are contextualized by the code around
them. But with poedit (or kbabel) we can see the context if
necessary.

Other advantage of having only one language in the source
code is that it becomes smaller and easier to read and fix.
It's easier to run the code in our mind if it is entirely in
the screen.

Of course, if you prefer, we can try the scripts. Would you
like to write them? 

Best,

Jakson

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From: Bernhard Reiter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 19:32:30 +0200

Hi Jakson,

> Of course, if you prefer, we can try the scripts. Would you

I also believe it is too much work, 
this is why I did not object.

Because I thought about that script possibility for a while,
I wanted to add it to the eternal archives, 
though I realise it is not worth the effort and I do not have the
time to try.

	Bernhard

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From: "Jakson A. Aquino" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:54:57 -0300

Hi Bernhard,

> though I realise it is not worth the effort and I do not have the

Then, since you and Andreas agree with me, I'll remove the
German strings.  I see the fact that statist is
internationalized as indicative that it's a good made in
Germany software. If I was German, I would be even more
proud of seeing statist working in many languages than of
hearing statist speaking German in any system it was
compiled in.

Best,

Jakson