[Xfce-i18n] po/POTFILES.in

[Daichi Kawahata]

Hi developers,

Okay let me talk a problem on this file, so far I've been seeing
no consensuses about treatment of this file among the developers
except Benedikt, Jasper; they had told me "Let me care". The
problem is, without certain agreements/conditioning, it's hard to
modify them when I happen to come across the redundant/missing
files, or receive a report from translator about that, because
there're POTFILES.in files:

  a) Listing all available files and desktop files get separated
     w/o (initial) brief comments.

  b) Listing all available files and they're distinguished by
     directories.

  c) Listing only files which contain translatable strings
     actually, including desktop files in alphabetically order
     with initial brief comments.

As far as I know, style a) seems commonly while b) is Jasper's,
c) is my style, but problem with style a) is that due to include
even auto-generated files, it forces translators to run make
process (at least till auto-generated files will get actually
generated) as usual you do, they'll give reports:

  "Subject: `make update-po' failed in blah"

and from my experiences, those auto-generated files hardly contain
translatable strings... Therefore, in this time, I'd like to unify
the style for POTFILES.in files:

  d) Listing only files which contain translatable strings actually
     with initial comments, in which desktop files get separated.

with attached script (potfiles-in.sh), also you can see what I'll
try to do at an attached patch (example.patch). The reason I'd like
to do is, it allows me auto-management for translation files:

  1. Update local repository tree once per week (or twice per month).
  2. Update POTFILES.in and POT/PO files with `make update-po'.
  3. Create diffs against POTFILES.in/POT files.
  4. Send a mail with them locally.
  5. Check them by creating the entire diffs.
  6. Make sure if there're any flaws 3-4 times.
  7. Commit them.

I'm already having scripts enable that, so only problem makes me
stumbled is that file. If you've read this post at this point,
probably you didn't skip this with "What's the big deal?" but may
have the other question "So, why don't translators wait announce
from developers? why so hurry to translate?" If you feel so, feel
free to raise a hand, I'll post in another mail.

Regards,
-- 
Daichi

Language Codes: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm
Country Codes: http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/related/iso3166.txt
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