Brion Vibber wrote:
Lately I've seen a lot of diffs to .i18n files
that look like this:
- (50 lines with one number of spaces in them)
+ (51 lines with a different number of spaces in them, and one of the
lines is new)
I think it would greatly simplify change tracking if we used more
consistent spacing in the localization files, eg changing this:
+ 'Search' => array( 'Sichen' ),
+ 'Resetpass' => array( 'Passwuert zrécksetzen' ),
to this:
+ 'Search' => array( 'Sichen' ),
+ 'Resetpass' => array( 'Passwuert zrécksetzen' ),
While it's cute, and sometimes helpful, to align columns in files that
are manually maintained, this:
1) Has no benefit to localization done via BetaWiki
2) Obscures the actual changes made in a commit when the number of
columns gets bumped, making overall code maintenance more difficult.
-- brion
I suggest not to remove the spacing in language files (everywhere). After trying
to rebuild a language file without spaces, I can see it is much harder to read
and maintain. While some of the localization is done via BetaWiki, I and several
other users update their languages using direct SVN changes, which is faster,
and also easier for some users. This change will make these updates harder, and
will discourage users from updating the localization that way. It will also make
it harder to read the language files or to find problems in them.
About reviewing localization updates: As Nikerabbit said, localization updates
(especially those from BetaWiki) are usually truncated anyway in mails from
mediawiki-cvs, and using diff tools that ignore whitespace changes (e.g. "svn
diff -x -b", or ViewVC) may be used for reviewing localization changes.
However, there is a problem when many messages are aligned in the same way. The
problem exists in extensions (e.g. CentralAuth, which contains many messages),
whose translations are not divided into groups. I suggest that the extensions
rebuilding script will support dividing messages into groups and make it
possible to avoid huge whitespace changes when a longer message key is added.
Rotem Liss