01/13: doc: Explain why synopses/descriptions must be literal strings.

[Ludovic Courtès]

civodul pushed a commit to branch master
in repository guix.

commit e797e94bf5298ed03a6677055d87bb6a9662d0d1
Author: Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden>
Date:   Tue Oct 3 14:48:09 2017 +0200

    doc: Explain why synopses/descriptions must be literal strings.
    
    Suggested by Dave Love <address@hidden>.
    
    * doc/guix.texi (Synopses and Descriptions): Recommend literal strings.
---
 doc/guix.texi | 12 ++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi
index c57c0ba..9e301d0 100644
--- a/doc/guix.texi
+++ b/doc/guix.texi
@@ -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:
+
address@hidden
+(package
+  ;; @dots{}
+  (synopsis "This is translatable")
+  (description (string-append "This is " "*not*" " translatable.")))
address@hidden 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