[desktop entry spec] new FullName key

[Shaun McCance]

On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 17:36 +0300, John Tapsell wrote:
> 2009/8/3 Shaun McCance <shaunm at gnome.org>:
> > On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 09:41 +0300, John Tapsell wrote:
> >> > Not sure what you mean with 'supporting GenericName', but the current
> >> > GNOME HIG recommendations are the way they are precisely because of the
> >> > translatability concerns of combining Name and GenericName
> >> > programatically.
> >>
> >> Could someone give an example where programmatically combining would
> >> fail, if the combining was done as  i18n("%1 %2")  or even i18n("%1 -
> >> %2")  ?
> >
> > In languages that have case declensions, "%1 %2" and "%1 - %2"
> > could involve the GenericName being written differently.  So
> > you might write "Epiphany - Web Browser", but "Epiphany Webo
> > Browsero".  (Completely made up example, of course.)
> 
> I don't get what you're saying.  I wrote  i18n("%1 %2"), but you might
> have missed that.  Is that the confusion?

No, I understood what you meant.  There are languages that will
do things like put different endings on a word based on where
it's being used in a sentence.  So if you asked a translator
to give you a phrase that looks like "Epiphany Web Browser",
he might use different spellings than if you ask him to give
you a phrase that looks like "Epiphany - Web Browser".

So let's say you use "%1 %2", and you pass it to gettext or
whatever you like to use so that translators can turn it into
"%2 %1" for word order issues and the like.  That's fine, as
long as the GenericName that was supplied by all translators
of all projects has the appropriate declension.

Now let's say I decide to go with "%1 - %2" in my software,
and I pass it to gettext, also thinking that solves all of
my i18n problems.  Now we have a problem.  For some languages,
the choice of GenericName that is correct in your software is
different than the choice of GenericName that is correct in
my software.

Is that more clear?

--
Shaun