Hi, Intltool supports to prefix fields by an underscore to mark them for translation in a .desktop file.
In source code, all translatable strings are explicitly marked as such, usually with _(), N_() etc. When we see such a string, we immediately know that it's extracted for translation. But in a *.desktop file, gettext currently doesn't support the underscore-prefix. From what I understand, it extracts a fixed set of fields that the freedesktop.org spec allows them to be translated. This leads to problems such as icons being translated whereas the maintainer doesn't want that. See this thread: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gettext/2015-09/msg00015.html GNOME projects using upstream gettext now adds a comment like this: # Translators: Do NOT translate or transliterate this text (this is an icon file name)! Icon=devhelp It stinks to need to add such a comment. Another problem, a .desktop file is sometimes used for other purposes, like writing the metadata of a libpeas plugin: https://developer.gnome.org/libpeas/stable/PeasPluginInfo.html https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=774338 All in all, migrating from intltool to upstream gettext is a step backward for *.desktop files. When reading the .desktop, we don't know what is extracted for translation, and it is less flexible than with intltool. The underscore-prefix is a standard way to mark something for translation, in an explicit way. Doing things implicitly, in a magic way, is a recipe for bugs (like a translator translating the icon name without verifying that an icon exists for the translated name). So, I hope you'll at least understand that there is currently a problem. Thanks, Sébastien
