[desktop entry spec] new FullName key

[Christian Rose]

On 8/7/09, William Jon McCann <william.jon.mccann at gmail.com> wrote:
>  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.

"Webbläsare - Epiphany" or "Webbläsare (Epiphany)" is not wrong per
se, it's just bad language style. I mean, in almost all cases you
refer to browsers and other types of applications that belong to a
specific category, and which you refer to by name, with a definite
article. Especially when you are doing a listing of similar
applications. This of course to some extent also applies to English.


Christian