[systemd-devel] Journal Message Catalog

[Keith Robertson]

Hi,

I was looking through the Journal Message Catalog spec [1] and I wanted 
to say kudos.  About time there was something like this for linux apps.

In reading the spec, I do have a concern about the fact that the spec 
seems to want to interleave the various supported locales within one 
catalog file (ie. a text file).  According to [1] the different 
translated messages within the catalog would be suffixed by the typical 
LL_CC (language_country) pattern.

I think this could be both confusing for people that are actually doing 
the translation and problematic for organizations that want to 
translate.  It might be useful to allow for something like locale 
specific PO (gettext portable object) files.  This would allow 
organizations to send the PO files off to different translation centers 
and have each translation center work independently rather than 
collectively on one monster file with interleaved locales.

Further, this would allow the translators to leave the 'message ID' 
alone and not tamper with it by adding a 'suffix'.  The locale meta-data 
could be conveyed by encoding this information into the file name in a 
manner similar to Java[2] or gettext[3].

Note: I'm not saying encoding locale into the filename is the best way 
it is just a common way of delivery.  You could, of course, use some 
other sort of meta-data and bind all locales into one binary dictionary 
which is what is currently happening (I think).

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Keith


[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/catalog
[2] Java style:
baseName.properties
baseName_language.properties
baseName_language_country.properties
baseName_language_country_variant.properties
[3] Gettext style:
LL/LC_MESSAGES
LL_CC/LC_MESSAGES

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