[josm-dev] Trouble translating JOSM: Same strings used in different places

[Dermot McNally]

The issue of localisation frameworks is one that I've been considering
a lot in the last few weeks in my day job. Our application is built in
perl, and perl provides a more powerful, code-allowed tool called
maketext which does more or less what gettext does but with some extra
bells and whistles. There are ways to use the .po file format for a
maketext lexicon. Some background:

http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/AUTRIJUS/Locale-Maketext-Lexicon-0.62/docs/webl10n.html

But the one thing that surprised me is that all common lexicon
arrangements assume that strings should be keyed not by an abstract
key (like, say, "EDIT_MENU_NAME", 'EDIT_TOOL_BUTTON_NAME") but by the
string itself in the primary language ("Edit", with no option to have
a second "Edit" in a different context). This struck me as troublesome
during my investigations, partly because of the context difficulty
that we're seeing here, but mostly because for a string like "ACME
Widgets company - your source of cheap widgets", any change, even one
of punctuation, or, in this example, a revision to your English
language slogan, forces an update of all localised string assets,
whether or not it's essential that they be adjusted (which for reasons
of English punctuation or grammar or single-market motto changes is
more trouble than is warranted).

Has this kind of problem not arisen many times before and been solved?

Dermot

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