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

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
> 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.

It is an issue nonetheless. The reason why I brought this up instead of 
supporting _("message id", "default text"), like you suggested, right 
away, was, that Stephan told me he felt strongly about using domains. I 
have given that some thought and it appears to me as a very obvious 
solution, yet the extraction tools, for example, will hardly be able to 
figure out what domain we're using in a certain python module.

BTW, the Plone project for example uses distinct message IDs all over 
the place. I've found that to be quite a clear approach. Maybe we should 
adopt that rule for at least the most common phrases like components and 
permissions.

> I'd certainly like to see it become possible to use a simpler form
> like:
> 
>     _("message id", "default text")

+1.

We could change extract.py to write the default text into the POT as a 
coment. That way we could use explicit message ids even for more 
complicated phrases without making it too complicated for the translator.

Philipp