Subject: Re: [PATCH] Make a colon translatable

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:29:50 -0700

Julien Palard <[email-masked]> writes:

> In french we use a no-break space before colon, so with formatting
> like:
>
>     printf("... %s: ...", _("some string"))
>
> We can't cleanly add our no-break space, so I think:
>
>     printf("... %s ...", _("some string:"))

Sorry, but I do not quite buy this.  The above is a representative
example of what we call "sentence lego", which is what we absolutely
want to avoid, isn't it?

We'd rather want to see

	printf_like_function(_("Use 'git %s' ...", "string"));

when "string" is something that should not be translated to begin
with (e.g. "add" to form "git add"), and different languages can use
different conventions for quoting the command name (a translation
may want to use something other than single-quotes, for example).

And in a less optimal case,

	printf_like_function(_("%s: ...", _("string")));

would be needed, when "string" is something that is to be translated
(e.g. a phrase used as a label, like "Untracked files" in the code
this patch touches).  I think the case you have is the latter one.

> diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
> index d33f9272b7..ef0c276c3d 100644
> --- a/wt-status.c
> +++ b/wt-status.c
> @@ -248,7 +248,7 @@ static void wt_longstatus_print_other_header(struct wt_status *s,
>  					     const char *how)
>  {
>  	const char *c = color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s);
> -	status_printf_ln(s, c, "%s:", what);
> +	status_printf_ln(s, c, "%s", what);

I.e. this one is better handled by

	status_printf_ln(s, c, _("%s:"), what);

as _(...) in C-locale is original-language centric, where we want
the label to be <phrase> immediately followed by a colon.  And that
allows French translation to have nbsp before the colon.

>  	if (s->show_untracked_files) {
> -		wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->untracked, _("Untracked files"), "add");
> +		wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->untracked, _("Untracked files:"), "add");

Then this <phrase>, to be used in the label above, can be without colon.

>  		if (s->show_ignored_mode)
> -			wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->ignored, _("Ignored files"), "add -f");
> +			wt_longstatus_print_other(s, &s->ignored, _("Ignored files:"), "add -f");

Ditto.

Thanks.