no-wrap again (Re: [xliff-tools] PO overview for XLIFF mapping guide)

[Asgeir Frimannsson]

Hi Bruno and Karl,

On Sat, 7 May 2005 04:23, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Asgeir Frimannsson wrote:
> >     no-wrap
> >
> >     Indicates that the text in the msgid field is not to be wrapped at
> >     page with (usually 80 characters) which it usually is. Note that
> >     this does not affect the wrapping of the actual source string, only
> >     the representation of it in the PO file.
>
> Correct.
>
> Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> > No, the no-wrap tells the translator, that the program will display the
> > message as-is, that is, without changing any white-space using a
> > monospaced font.  At least, the no-wrap flag in .c files was invented
> > with this in mind.
>
> This is not true, IMO.
>   - The effects of  /* xgettext: no-wrap */  are not documented in the
>     manual.
>   - The vast majority of terminal-based programs do no line-wrapping on
>     strings retrieved through gettext(). If your assumption was true,
>     most strings should carry the 'no-wrap' attribute. They don't.
>

Yeah, agree with you here Bruno. You were both [Bruno, Karl] involved in the 
discussion leading to the implementation of this I believe (?), so there 
might have been some mis-communication somewhere on the actual function of 
the no-wrap flag, but anyway - I should stay out of that discussion :)  

> Really, 'no-wrap' is only an indicator for the tools when creating a PO
> file. If a programmer wants to tell something to the translator, he uses
> plain comments like
>
>      /* TRANSLATORS: Please make the translation fit in 79 columns,
>         assuming a monospaced font. */

Ideally though, there would be a way to make such
a comment map to something like:

<trans-unit ... maxwidth='79' size-unit='char'>
  <source>....</source>
  <target>....</target>
</trans-unit>

meaning translators won't be able to add more than 79 unicode characters to a 
single line in their editor.

...but I'm a bit a head of myself here - most editors does not honour the 
maxwith attribute anyway - and it's certainly not an issue for the current PO 
to XLIFF implementations :)

> > No, you cannot set the flag in the PO file using the --no-wrap switch.
>
> Correct. --no-wrap makes the tools behave as if there was a 'no-wrap'
> attribute on every message. But it doesn't add the attribute.

Yep. My mistake. 

Thanks for your input on this guys, much appreciated :)

cheers,
asgeir