terminology: zero character vs. null character
Hi, I am currently translating GCC into German. During that, I noticed that in some places the term "zero character" means '\0'. The official term though is "null character", as per the C standard. Since it is confusing to have two different terms for the same concept, the term "zero character" should be dropped entirely, both because it is uncommon and because it can be confused with '0'. Since this affects several places in the code, I think it's better to start a small discussion first instead of writing several PRs. Regards, Roland
diagnostics: %<%s%> vs. %qs
Hi, in the diagnostics the %qs specifier is used in most of the cases. But there are some cases left where the more complicated %<%s%> is used. Is there a good reason to prefer the complicated spelling? Same for %<%T%> and %qT, and similar letters. Regards, Roland
Diagnostics that should not be translated
Hi,
the gcc.pot file currently contains more than 12000 messages to be
translated, which is a very high number. Many of these messages are
diagnostics, and they can be categorized as follows:
* errors in user programs, reported via error ()
* additional info for internal errors, reported via error ()
* internal errors, reported via gfc_internal_error ()
* others
In my opinion, there is no point in having internal error messages
translated, since their only purpose is to be sent back to the GCC
developers, instead of being interpreted and acted upon by the GCC user.
By not translating the internal errors, the necessary work for
translators can be cut down by several hundred messages.
Therefore the internal errors should not be translated at all.
https://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html#Diagnostics currently
mentions a few ways of emitting diagnostics, but there is no way to
produce untranslated diagnostics. Therefore I'd like to have a new
function error_no_i18n that is used instead of error for nonfatal
internal errors, like this:
@code{error_no_i18n} is for diagnostics that are printed before invoking
internal_error. They are not translated.
(I don't care about the exact function name, though. :))
Regards,
Roland
Re: Diagnostics that should not be translated
Am 15.03.2017 um 03:43 schrieb Martin Sebor:
> Would using the existing internal_error{,no_backtrace}, and
> sorry work for this? (I.e., not translating those.) If my
> count is right there are nearly 500 calls to these three in
> GCC sources so I'm not sure that would put enough of a dent
> in the 12K messages to translate but I'm even less sure that
> adding yet another API would do even that much.
In relative terms the 500 may seem like not so much, but in absolute
terms they are still worth 1 to 3 days of translating work. Especially
since many of the terms in the internal errors are not as carefully
worded as the diagnostics targeted at the GCC user, and they contain
lots of technical terms for which there is no obvious translation.
For the German translation I took the easy path of making the German
internal errors exactly the same as the English ones, so whether this is
addressed or not won't make a difference for the upcoming release. It's
just that I think the other translators shouldn't need to go through the
same steps as I did.
Regards,
Roland
