[Zope3-dev] i18n domains vs. unique message ids -OR- why Shakespearean English was better

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Philipp von Weitershausen writes:
 >     The problem with this solution is that there is no way to manually
 >     specify the message id while still providing a default value with
 >     both zope.i18n.messageid.MessageIDFactory and the ZCML schema field
 >     zope.configuration.fields.MessageID. And the above stated problem
 >     with 'View' just happens to involve these two cases

This is a nuissance, but I think not so bad as you describe.

The real issue is that gettext-style extraction tools are too stupid.
If they would extract _("message id", "default text"), life would be
much easier.

What I've done when I've wanted message ids to be distinct from the
default text is to use a helper function, like this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
from zope.i18n.messageid import MessageIDFactory

DOMAIN = "zope-widget-examples"

_ = MessageIDFactory(DOMAIN)

def message(msgid, default):
    # XXX This treats MessageID objects as mutable objects, but is
    # only used when the MessageID is first created.  Using a separate
    # function is needed since the message catalog tools require that
    # _() take exactly one positional string literal argument, else we
    # could just call the MessageID constructor directly.
    assert msgid.default == msgid
    assert msgid.domain == DOMAIN
    msgid.default = default
    return msgid
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The text in the Python code becomes:

    message(_("message id"), "default text")

I'd certainly like to see it become possible to use a simpler form
like:

    _("message id", "default text")

but the tools would need to be changed to support this.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fred at zope.com>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation