On 7/25/06, Christian Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Of course in most cases the proper 'fix' is to have a boldtype > > font. But creating a boldface font is not always that easy, > > when one is talking about complex scripts that consists of > > at least hundreds or thousands of glyphs; and it needs quite > > some human horsepower as well, which may not be available for > > newly available languages in F/OSS world. > > I understand that problem, but I for sure don't agree that this is the > proper way to fix it, as this hack, that is, gratiously including > surrounding markup inside the translateable message content, causes a > lot of problems for all translators. As a translator you want to > translate the *content*, not the surrounding presentation. I don't > care whether the words will be written on a billboard, a folder, or > on-screen, the words will be the same. As Clytie explained: [......]
I didn't say my mind clearly. What I want to say is, I don't like such kind of hack either, but it has really existed before. Right now such workaround is no more needed. Abel > Here are some ways to solve the problem of bad rendering: > > 1) Fix the fonts. Agreed, not an easy task. > 2) Solve the problem at the Pango level. Instead of encouraging the > use of <b> and <i> tags, add abstract <strong>, <em> tags/attributes > or some such, allowing for different interpretations for different > scripts. If we know that boldface fonts for Persian always suck, > <strong> can have a different representation for Persian script. > Then the HIG and other such specifications can specify these > attributes instead of a particular font style. > > > And here's how to solve the (ab)use of using surrounding PangoMarkup > inside translateable messages: > > 3) Make gtk+/Pango have support for *attributes* instead of forcing > everyone to use PangoMarkup. If I want a label to be bold, italic, > smaller, or larger, I as a developer should be able to simply set > attributes to that effect. Right now, it's too common to see something > like this: > > msgid "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>" > msgstr "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>" > > msgid "<span weight=\"bold\">Date & Time</span>" > msgstr "<span weight=\"bold\">Datum och tid</span>" > > msgid "<b>Date & Time</b>" > msgstr "<b>Datum och tid</b>" > > msgid "<span size=\"medium\"><b>No file</b></span>" > msgstr "<span size=\"medium\"><b>Ingen fil</b></span>" > > msgid "No file" > msgstr "Ingen fil" > > Often, you will have duplicated messages in the same file, just with > different markup! > > If gtk+/Pango and libglade would make it possible for application > writers to set *attributes* for these things instead of having to > resort to PangoMarkup, all problems would be solved. > > > Christian > -- Abel Cheung (GPG Key: 0xC67186FF) Key fingerprint: 671C C7AE EFB5 110C D6D1 41EE 4152 E1F1 C671 86FF -------------------------------------------------------------------- * GNOME Hong Kong - http://www.gnome.hk/ * Opensource Application Knowledge Assoc. - http://oaka.org/ _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
