Re: format-patch: why are the Range-diff: and Interdiff: headers translated?
On Tue, Sep 23, 2025, at 20:16, Eric Sunshine wrote:
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> On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 12:54 PM Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com> wrote:
>> git-format-patch(1) has had translated strings for `Range-diff:` and
>> `Interdiff:` since they were introduced.[1][2][3]
>>
>> // Example
>> _("Interdiff against v%d: ...
>>
>> Is that how translated/l10n Git is supposed to to work? I get
>> translating errors and such—that’s for the user. But a Colombian user
>> might send out patches to an international email list. Why should their
>> own translated UI (again, if I’m understanding l10n correctly) affect
>> the patch output?
>
> Making these translatable was deliberate. As I recall, I had been able
> to formulate arguments in favor of both making them translatable and
> making them non-translatable, though I no longer remember what those
> arguments were.Thanks for quick and solid reply!
> One argument in favor may have been that (a) the titles "Interdiff" &
> "Range-diff" are meant for human readers, not for machine consumption,
> and (b) there may very well be non-English-centric projects
> (open-source or not) using a patch-based workflow.
I’m not concerned about machine-readability. My thought was that localization/l10n of this software was intended for the user themselves. And also that users might, without intending to do so necessarily, end up using localized output in contexts where they do want English strings, like on an English-language mailing list. Even though they might prefer Spanish (from my Colombian example) when using Git themselves.
But there might for all I know be Colombian/Latin American patch mailing lists where localization like this works great.
I’m not really in the natural target group for l10n Git. I might be totally missing all the use-cases here.
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> I further recall that I was expecting pushback from reviewers and was
> surprised when there was none. Hence, those titles remained
> translatable in the final version.
>
> As far as I recall, this is only the second time in the intervening
> years that someone has questioned why the titles are translatable. If
> your reason for posing this question is that you believe the titles
> should not be translatable and you wish to submit a patch series to
> rectify that, then you won't get pushback from me. Also, in support of
> such a proposal, I do recall (though can't find the email) that Junio
> once pushed back years ago against someone proposing to make the
> diffstat "x file changed, y insertions(+), z deletions(-)" summary
> translatable.
Oh, not at all. I don’t intend to send any patches to change something that only me (and one other person from years ago?) have questions about. These are only questions, after all (from my side anyway).
Good night!
--
Kristoffer Haugsbakk
