<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.3.2"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 11:29 +1000, Asgeir Frimannsson wrote: Hi <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> On Mon, 2 May 2005 23:39, Rodolfo M. Raya wrote: > Line breaks are defined by the translator. When translations are long, > you find things like this: > > > msgid "" > "Short text in the original" > msgstr "" > "long translation, that spans to perhaps two " > "lines or more in the target language because " > "it does not fit in the dialogue where it has " > "to be displayed" > > > Translators add the necessary line breaks at translation time in the > editor. Lines are usually kept shorter than 70~80 characters. I might have misunderstood you here, but in this example the msgstr at runtime would be one long line without newline characters. But I assume you here meant that translators add the necessary '\n' characters to break the target string into multiple lines at runtime. </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> I know that the text is seen as a long string by the program at runtime. But the program needs to parse the escape characters embedded in the string, so you should never remove the escape characters as Yves and you proposed. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> In an XLIFF editor, instead of manually adding newlines to be able to see the whole *long* string in the editor window, shouldn't it be word-wrapped (and visually indicated some how), </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> I know that. Heartsome's XLIFF editor has automatic word wrapping. I don't care if the translated document says <BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>msgstr  ""</TT> <TT>"line 1 "</TT> <TT>"line 2"</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> or <BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>msgstr  "line 1 line 2"</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> but when the entry is <BLOCKQUOTE> msgid "line 1\n line 2\n" </BLOCKQUOTE> the translated version should be <BLOCKQUOTE> msgid "line1\n line2\n" msgstr "linea 1\n linea 2\n" </BLOCKQUOTE> or <BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>msgid </TT>"" <TT>"line1\n</TT><TT> </TT>" "<TT>line2\n"</TT> <TT>msgstr ""</TT> <TT>"linea 1\n"</TT> <TT>" linea 2\n"</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> To achieve that, it is important that all characters that are inside double quotes in the msgid appear in the <source> element. Do not assume that some magic can recreate them at reverse conversion if they are not present in the source. Regards, Rodolfo <TABLE CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD> -- Rodolfo M. Raya <<A HREF="mailto:rodolfo@heartsome.net">rodolfo@heartsome.net</A>> Heartsome Holdings Pte Ltd </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY> </HTML>