~ruther/guix-local

e797e94bf5298ed03a6677055d87bb6a9662d0d1 — Ludovic Courtès 8 years ago df71c88
doc: Explain why synopses/descriptions must be literal strings.

Suggested by Dave Love <fx@gnu.org>.

* doc/guix.texi (Synopses and Descriptions): Recommend literal strings.
1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

M doc/guix.texi
M doc/guix.texi => doc/guix.texi +12 -0
@@ 19147,6 19147,18 @@ Translation Project} so that as many users as possible can read them in
their native language.  User interfaces search them and display them in
the language specified by the current locale.

To allow @command{xgettext} to extract them as translatable strings,
synopses and descriptions @emph{must be literal strings}.  This means
that you cannot use @code{string-append} or @code{format} to construct
these strings:

@lisp
(package
  ;; @dots{}
  (synopsis "This is translatable")
  (description (string-append "This is " "*not*" " translatable.")))
@end lisp

Translation is a lot of work so, as a packager, please pay even more
attention to your synopses and descriptions as every change may entail
additional work for translators.  In order to help them, it is possible