Wed 25 Jun 2008 12:40:59 AM UTC, original submission:
PROBLEMS: frontpage_controller twice refers to the string 'English' with the meaning 'name that this language calls itself'. Also doc/translations.txt once refers to this. The problems are:
(1) People translating/checking a .po file do not realise that 'English' should be translated as e.g. 'Francais' or 'nihongo' (in japanese letters) rather than 'anglais' or 'eigo' respectively. This is a sysadmin-usability bug.
(2) Surely the idea of gettext and .po files is that in the long term they should not just be specific to a single software package. With about 10^4 to 10^5 words in each widely spoken human language, and a huge number of possible grammatically correct, semantically meaningful combinations of these words, surely it is extremely inefficient not to plan on having libraries of .po files for common words or expressions. In this case, most software packages are surely more likely to translate 'English' to 'anglais' and 'eigo' rather than 'French' and 'nihongo', so the present situation in frontpage_controller is likely to conflict with future usages.
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
(1) In frontpage_controller.rb: put '(name that this language calls itself)' instead of 'English' and remove the 'en' != lang clause, i.e. put
(2) create an en.po file with
msgid "(name that this language calls itself)"
msgstr "English"
and the appropriate header and msgfmt this etc. along with all the other .po files. i don't know how standard en.po files are, but it seems reasonable to me.
(3) correct the info in doc/translations.txt
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