Package: gettext Version: 0.14.4-1 Severity: minor File: /usr/bin/msgmerge
When running msgmerge on a ja.po file with ,----- |# Copyright \251 2000-2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. `----- (note the iso-8859-1 (C) copyright character octal 251 in the comment) and with ,----- |"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=euc-jp\n" `----- in the specification, I got this meaningless error message: ,----- |msgmerge: conversion failure `----- It only has a meaning if you already know what the problem is. I suggest augmenting the error message like this: --- gettext-tools/src/msgl-iconv.c.orig 2003-12-19 12:17:28.000000000 +0100 +++ gettext-tools/src/msgl-iconv.c 2005-04-21 16:33:01.000000000 +0200 @@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ && strlen (result) == resultlen - 1) return result; - error (EXIT_FAILURE, 0, _("conversion failure")); + error (EXIT_FAILURE, 0, _("iconv charset conversion failure")); /* NOTREACHED */ return NULL; } This makes it clear that there is some problem with the character encoding, which makes it possible to find the problem within minutes instead of within days. Apart from that, it may possibly be desirable for msgmerge & Co. to - only consider the strings in msgid "" and msgstr "" to be encoded in the given charset - ignore 8-bin characters found in .po file comments but I don't think this is important. Error messages which actually point the user to the cause of the problem are more interesting. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (800, 'unstable'), (100, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.11-rc2-vs1.9.4-rc3-ndim-1 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Versions of packages gettext depends on: ii gettext-base 0.14.4-1 GNU Internationalization utilities ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-21 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]