[Adium-devl] Watching a first time Adium user for 5 minutes

[Andreas Monitzer]

On Jan 28, 2007, at 17:55, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> Mm?  String comparisons are done in a bunch of places... but how is
> strcmp(message, "INVALID_PASSWORD") == 0
> any different than
> strcmp(message, "Invalid Password") == 0

Well, if somebody changed the English translation to "Wrong  
Password", the second comparison would fail, while the first one  
would still work.

> The problem was that a new string had been added and we didn't  
> notice.  Specifically, the AIM service now distinguishes between  
> "Invalid screenname" and "Invalid password" whereas previously  
> there was a single message, "Invalid nickname or password".

Well, this is another issue that already delayed 1.0 for a few  
months. Development version of libgaim were merged into Adium without  
checking the changes that were done to it, which caused a lot of  
regressions, which had to be traced back to libgaim.

> If any part of the string changed, the localization would need to  
> be updated.  "Foo %x" != "Foo %x  bar"... so if we had "Foo %x" =  
> "THIS_IS_FOO_IDENTIFIER–%x" as the translation, that translation  
> would no longer be used if the underlying string changed to "Foo %x  
> bar". We'd need to update the translation.

Well, I assumed that the libgaim-devs don't change the localization  
keys willy-nilly. However, I don't have any experience with the  
working style of the libgaim devs.

> Part of the problem with such a split is that since the Gaim core  
> supports plugins which could do anything, including providing  
> additional protocols, you can't have a centralized singlee list of  
> possible messages.  There's just so much text passed from protocol  
> to core to UI... it'll be a huge undertaking to find a way to do  
> that in a non-UI (identifiers rather than text) fashion.

Ok, that's a problem. The issue is that libgaim might not contain all  
localizations Adium offers. I know a few people here that would be in  
a great panic if their german Adium would suddenly pop up an english  
message (since they wouldn't understand it).

andy