State of desktop file translations

[Scott Kitterman]

Felix Geyer <debfx at ubuntu.com> wrote:

>Hey all,
>
>First a bit of background:
>
>In Kubuntu we strip the translations from .desktop files of all KDE
>packages
>in main and add a reference to a gettext domain.
>This domain is used at runtime to look up the translations.
>
>The upstream translations are imported into Launchpad through the
>kde-l10n-* packages and then exported to language packs.
>
>There are a number of problems with that approach:
>
>Previously the gettext domain was always desktop_<source package name>.
>This changed with KDE 4.7 for all KDE SC packages that have been
>(partly) split. This means that we don't have upstream translations for
>any of these desktop files.
>
>In some desktop files there are strings that have a special gettext
>domain
>(indicated by a comment in the file) which we don't parse. This again
>leads
>to untranslated strings.
>See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/749379
>
>We throw away upstream translations of many non-KDE SC packages
>because those are not imported through kde-l10n-*. We do import some of
>them
>but it's a manual list which no one really maintains.
>
>Some of the problems have existed before this cycle but the KDE 4.7
>issue is a
>big regression in oneiric which we need to fix ASAP.
>
>There are two options:
>1) Disable desktop file stripping completely and rebuild the packages.
>2) Manually set the gettext domain in each of the KDE SC packages.
>
>In my opinion desktop file stripping has never worked properly and no
>one seems
>to be willing to maintain it.
>Therefore I propose that we carry out option 1). I think the regression
>potential is fairly
>low since in-file translations are commonly used (all universe
>packages).
>
>What are your opinions?


If we leave the translations in the .desktop files, can Gnome/Unity/Etc on Ubuntu use them from there?

Scott K