[Aptitude-devel] Doc translations: Untranslatable strings?

[Daniel Hartwig]

On 27 June 2014 18:51, Mario Blättermann <mario.blaettermann at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> currently I'm working on the German translation of the Aptitude docs. Hopefully
> I will finish it before Jessie gets frozen.

Hello and thank you.

> Some of the strings look as follows:
>
> # type: Content of: <refentry><refsect1><variablelist><varlistentry><term>
> #. type: Content of the Snot entity
> #: en/aptitude.xml:83
> msgid "<literal><link linkend='searchNot'>?not</link></literal>"
> msgstr "<literal><link linkend='searchNot'>?not</link></literal>"
>
> As far as I can see, other translators have copied the strings literally, but I
> was wondering how those are processed? Does it make sense to translate the
> content, "?not" in this case?

No, do not translate this or other search terms, neither the command
line options.  The program does not accept localized search terms or
command line [1].

> Or is this just a constraint of po4a, which can't
> handle XML strings yet which doesn't need to be translated?

I believe that po4a can do this, at least in some cases.  I am not
certain and will look in to it.

> Thanks for explanations.
>
> Best Regards,
> Mario

[1] <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=738345>