[desktop entry spec] new FullName key

[William Jon McCann]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Christian Rose<menthos at menthos.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/09, Shaun McCance <shaunm at gnome.org> wrote:
>> 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.)
>>
>>  You can't reliably translate GenericName to fit into one or
>>  the other, because different implementations might decide to
>>  display things differently.
>
> Another example would be Scandinavian languages like e.g. Swedish,
> where the definitive article is a suffix of the noun, and if and when
> you use a name to distinguish the noun, i.e. you refer to a specific
> instance of the noun, you have to use the definitive article. Doing
> otherwise would be incorrect.
>
> Examples:
>
> "Web Browser" (as in any web browser) == "Webbläsare"
>
> "Epiphany Web Browser" (as in *the* Epiphany web browser, not just any
> web browser) => "Webbläsaren Epiphany" (== "The Epiphany Web Browser")
>
> Just writing "Webbläsare Epiphany", i.e. the literal equivalent of
> "Epiphany Web Browser", would look extremely odd and incorrect in
> Swedish. The definitive article (suffix) needs to be there in Swedish
> if the name is there and we thus refer to a specific application.
>
> So, as always with localization, you just can't concatenate sentences
> or pieces of sentences and get a result. It has to be translated as a
> whole.

So can you explain why this argument also applies to i18n("%1 - %2")?
Is "Webbläsare - Epiphany" wrong?  We aren't trying to say "The
Epiphany Web Browser" - we are trying to say Epiphany is a web
browser.  (Ignoring the fact that browser is not the best term to
use).  I don't see how this is the same as concatenation.

Thanks,
Jon