466425 - Breaking up strings into separate translatable entities sucks from an l10n standpoint

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[(no longer active)]

Some places in our code do this when trying to make the whole string localizable:

Example sentence:
To do this, <a href=blah>click here</a> and then do something else.

Translatable entities:
sentenceBefore = To do this,
sentenceMiddle = click here
sentenceAfter = and then do something else.

This sucks from the l10n standpoint, where localizers have difficulty finding and translating individual pieces, and the translation don't make sense immediately unless all three entities are viewed together.  This also confuses translation tools we use (see <http://groups.google.com/group/narro-project/browse_thread/thread/410c3d15816df298> for an example).

Examples of this exists in about.dtd and aboutRights.dtd in browser/.

And the situation gets worse for example in the identity panel, which we use:

You are connected to
*mozilla.org*
which is run by
(unknown)

Now, for example, the correct Persian translation here would be:

شما به
*mozilla.org*
که توسط
(نامعلوم)
اداره می‌شود متصل شده‌اید

But the designer of this panel has not predicted the case where a language needs the fifth string, hence I had to twist the language in the identity panel to fit the sentence into the existing four strings, which sucks.

We need to stop splitting the sentences in this way, and instead either use %S to inject the non-localizable parts for properties files, or use embedded entities to inject middle parts.

(Yes, this is more like a meta bug, which we can use for general discussion, and we can file individual bugs for each issue).

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I don't think we really need a meta bug here for discussion. Let's just get bugs file for the cases and fix them. The identity panel you describe I think is a slightly different case that will need handling specially, but then most of them probably need individual consideration.

Comment 2

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Resolving WONTFIX. Composing strings of several fragments is unfortunate, but as there's no good way to deal with placables like fragments of xul or html that would suck less, we'll stick to this. No, entities won't work, or look just as evil. I tried in bug 346315, it was ugh-y.

If there are individual occurences where there are fragments left out, we need individual bugs on that.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Resolving WONTFIX. Composing strings of several fragments is unfortunate, but
> as there's no good way to deal with placables like fragments of xul or html
> that would suck less, we'll stick to this. No, entities won't work, or look
> just as evil. I tried in bug 346315, it was ugh-y.

This is unfortunate...

> If there are individual occurences where there are fragments left out, we need
> individual bugs on that.

Filed bug 466429 for the identity dialog.