Ideal D GUI Toolkit

[Diggory]

On Thursday, 23 May 2013 at 08:31:46 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2013-05-23 10:29, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>
>> Say I have:
>>
>> gettext("%s: unknown variable at line %s")
>>
>> Then I want to change the text to:
>>
>> gettext("%s: not yet known variable at line %s")
>>
>> I have to find all places where this text is used in the code. 
>> Then I
>> also need to updated the translations. If I used a key instead 
>> I only
>> need to update all the translations. I don't need to change my 
>> code.
>
> Also, with the key approach I can just send a separate file to 
> someone else to do the translation, even the English 
> translation. Sure I probably could have a separate file for the 
> English translation as well but that would be duplicating the 
> string.

Given a change that is purely aesthetic like that you could just 
change the english translation instead... Also "find and replace" 
takes a few seconds...

If you are suggesting to use a named constant as a key, this also 
suffers from the exact problem you are pointing out that if you 
need to change the name slightly you need to do it in all places 
that constant is used in the code.

It also suffers from the fact that unless you use unreasonably 
long names for the constant you can't easily tell what it 
contains.

Plus assuming these constants are internally numbered and that is 
the key used, you get the problem of translations matched to the 
wrong key and nobody realising because the key does not relate in 
any way to the meaning. With a text key the only time you reuse a 
key is if it has the same meaning.