> We could change Gettext to stop considering the Icon key as translatable 
> *without* changing the specification, but that would be a violation of the 
> spec

Would it?  The spec does not say that localestrings are translatable.  It says 
that they are _localizable_, in a specific technical sense that the spec lays 
out.  That is, different values can be provided for different locales by use of 
locale postfixes, and lookup by key is expected to take those into account in 
light of LC_MESSAGES when determining the value associated with the key.

That most keys with localestring values are best localized by translating their 
values between human languages is a function of the significance of specific 
keys, not of the data type.

> , and the Gettext maintainers don't want to commit to that violation; which 
> is why Will is asking to fix the spec, in order to unblock the catch-22 
> situation with Gettext developers waiting for a change to the spec, and the 
> spec maintainers waiting for a change in the localisation software.

I claim that the Gettext maintainers are interpreting the spec wrongly.  
Evidently that misinterpretation is fairly common, hence the prevalence of 
“don’t translate this” comments on Icon keys, but on the other hand, the 
prevalence of such comments also conveys that it is widely understood that Icon 
keys should not be localized by translation (and, it follows, maybe not at all).


Regards,

John

--
john.bollin...@stjude.org


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