Hi, Currently, Icon= and similar fields in .desktop files are defined to be "localestring", and are extracted for translation by tools like xgettext. I propose to redefine them to "string" https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/merge_requests/2 and stop xgettext extracting them. https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?56543
I did some cursory archaeology and the only discussion I can find around icons being translatable is this message https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2005-June/005364.html and its descendents. The argument given there is: I think Icon is intentionally a localestring - you might imagine an icon > having some text or a cultural reference. I don't think it would be a good > idea to have an icon like that and I haven't seen a localized Icon key in > practice but ... I agree with everything here – technically, it's correct to make them localizable, even if I have never noticed a localised icon. (That said, English is my first and only language, and I live in the UK…) On the other hand, I have seen translators trying hard to translate icon names, which are often strange collections of kebab-case-words or com.example.reverse_domain.Words. I've seen many comments of the form "# TRANSLATORS: please do not translate this". Is there widespread use of localized icons that I'm not aware of? If so, perhaps the right path is to add a flag to xgettext to opt in (or opt out) of this behaviour; this might not be an easy sell since the specification is clear that these are localestrings. If not, could we consider this a case where the practical cost (in the form of wasted work for translators) outweighs the conceptual upside, and change the spec (and implementation)? Thanks, – Will
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