In creating a global PPD for Leopard using the CUPS-DDK's PPD
compiler (ppdc), is there
a way to translate strings written in English into another English
string? Example is the
string "TrueMale" into "True" where "TrueMale" is a string with
gender. There are strings
that have gender to some locales, like in French, but in English,
they don't.
I tried creating an en.po and included the translation of
"TrueMale" into "True" but the
compiler did not recognize the en.po file. The *.po files for other
locales were recognized.
If I did not translate the strings with gender, then the global PPD
I will generate will have
"TrueMale" string instead of just "True" for English locale. For
the other locales, they will have
the correct string.
Changing the strings with gender is the last option because I used
the same strings
for Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger. I want to maintain the look and
feel of my PPD as much
as possible.
This is a problem of design:
To make it easy for the average american software developer, the base
language to translate from is "English". Thus there are some
limitations where two words (or phrases) are equal in the base
language but different in the target language or vice versa.
English, of all things! Where verbs and nouns can be identical. Where
"Imperative" (grammar) has the same wording as "Infinitive". I can
hardly think of a worse choice for a base language.
A better design would use some artificial language as base and treat
english identical as all other target languages. Yes, this means a
little more effort when starting a new software project - but it will
pay out quickly, the more target languages (and thus different
grammatical cases) you use the sooner.
(e.g. all our software gets developed in "Esperanto" - which isn't
true esperanto but english with a unique identifier - to avoid those
problems. Of course this only works 'cause we never will ship true
esperanto)
I appreciate any help.
File a bug to fix the broken design.
Though I'm afraid that will never get fixed because it is not a
problem for american developers targeting their home market...
Marc
--
In a world without walls and fences,
who needs windows and gates?
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