[katello-devel] How to format strings

[Lukas Zapletal]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 09:20:18AM +0200, Miroslav Suchy wrote:
> In our code base we use very frequently:
> 
> _("Couldn't find changeset '#{params[:changeset_id]}'")
> 
> and later:
> 
> _("Couldn't find changeset '#{params[:id]}'")
> 
> But this notation means that the name of variable is part of string
> to be translated. And that results in two strings, which needs to be
> translated:
> 
> msgid "\"Couldn't find changeset '#{params[:changeset_id]}'\""
> msgstr ""
> 
> msgid "\"Couldn't find changeset '#{params[:id]}'\""
> msgstr ""
> 
> 
> Please if you are writing string, which you are passing to gettext
> function (aka _()), then user rather this notation:
> 
> _("Couldn't find changeset '%s'") % params[:id]
> 
> or
> 
> _("Couldn't find changeset '%s' and '%s'") % [params[:id], foo]
> 
> If we will follow this, we will significantly reduce number of
> strings to be translated.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> P.S. I'm preparing pull request, which will unify these duplicities.
> I'm doing that in my spare time, so it will take some time.
>

There was a long discussion on the list in this regard and we have
agreed we will stick with #{} but only for simple variables. We should
avoid constructs like calling functions or hashes in this case.

> _("Couldn't find changeset '#{simplevar}'")

Because this gives translators better flexibility when there are
multiple substitutions. With %s they are not able to re-order those for
some languages.

I know there is a generic approach of numbering those, something like %1
%2 but after short investigation we have found this is not possible for
Ruby i18n libraries we use.

I think the plan was to write a simple checker that would watch the
codebase for invalid string interpolations. Correct me, if I am wrong.

https://fedorahosted.org/katello/wiki/I18N

-- 
Later,

 Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
 #katello #systemengine