From e797e94bf5298ed03a6677055d87bb6a9662d0d1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ludovic Courtès Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 14:48:09 +0200 Subject: doc: Explain why synopses/descriptions must be literal strings. Suggested by Dave Love . * doc/guix.texi (Synopses and Descriptions): Recommend literal strings. --- doc/guix.texi | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi index c57c0bab63..9e301d0072 100644 --- a/doc/guix.texi +++ b/doc/guix.texi @@ -19147,6 +19147,18 @@ Translation Project} so that as many users as possible can read them in their native language. User interfaces search them and display them in the language specified by the current locale. +To allow @command{xgettext} to extract them as translatable strings, +synopses and descriptions @emph{must be literal strings}. This means +that you cannot use @code{string-append} or @code{format} to construct +these strings: + +@lisp +(package + ;; @dots{} + (synopsis "This is translatable") + (description (string-append "This is " "*not*" " translatable."))) +@end lisp + Translation is a lot of work so, as a packager, please pay even more attention to your synopses and descriptions as every change may entail additional work for translators. In order to help them, it is possible -- cgit v1.2.3