On 12 June 2013 07:03, S Page spage@wikimedia.org wrote:
Almost every extension's i18n.php file has
/** Message documentation (Message documentation)
- @author Some Person
*/ $messages['qqq'] = array( ...
Why repeat it?
Is it because the header for each language section is "/** French (français)" , so Qqq is being consistent? But the English header is just /** English.
You are on the right track. English language sections are not managed by translatewiki.net (Translate extension) so they retain the original formatting.
For all other languages the tools regenerates the sections from scratch which makes them all use consistent format. I don't see the little repeating a worth of special casing it.
Does some undocumented tool in maintenance/language rely on the format of these headings?
Not there as far as I know, but Translate extension is picky about the formatting of the i18n files. But the language names are ignored on reading, only the language code matters.
-Niklas