Trailing format string in Android is broken

[thgoebel]

Describe the issue

In our Android app, we have the following string in our values/strings.xml:

<string name="cmd_camera_response_success">"The device is taking a picture and will send it to FMD Server. You can view it here soon: %s</string>

Note the trailing %s.

Recently, Weblate started to ignore the trailing "s", and suggest to users that they remove it from the translations.

This has resulted in some translators removing the "s", even though it should be there.

This results in the linter (rightfully!) complaining when compiling our Android app:

Error: Format string 'cmd_camera_response_success' is not a valid format string so it should not be passed to String.format [StringFormatInvalid]
          transport.send(context, context.getString(R.string.cmd_camera_response_success, serverUrl))
                                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      /builds/Nulide/findmydevice/app/src/main/res/values-ta/strings.xml:21: This definition does not require arguments

This recently (in the last few weeks) broke. The string in question has not been touched on our main branch since June 2024, and up to now Weblate has not had this issue.

I already tried

• I've read and searched the documentation.
• I've searched for similar filed issues in this repository.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Define a string with a trailing "%s" in an Android app
2. Pull it into Weblate

Expected behavior

The %s should be part of the string.

Screenshots

Exception traceback

n/a

How do you run Weblate?

weblate.org service

Weblate versions

No response

Weblate deploy checks

No response

Additional context

Weblate project: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/findmydevice/fmd-android/

Offending string in Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/Nulide/findmydevice/-/blame/1d0dbe75677f4a66bf8c6b2cb3fc5b3edf0013e0/app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml#L192

Offending string in Weblate: https://hosted.weblate.org/translate/findmydevice/fmd-android/en/?checksum=d7d28e73f83c973f

[nijel]

This might be already fixed by translate/translate#5450.

BTW: How does Android render that string? It has an opening quote, but not a closing quote. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource only describes using quotes in pairs or escaping them.

[nijel]

Okay, the issue is still present in the current translate-toolkit, translate/translate#5456 should be the fix. Still, the correct behavior in this case is unclear. The question is whether to preserve whitespace in such a string or not. I've chosen to treat a string with a missing closing quote as quoted one.

[github-actions]

The issue you've reported needs to be addressed in the translate-toolkit. Please file the issue there, and include links to any relevant specifications about the formats (if applicable).

[github-actions]

Thank you for your report; the issue you have reported has just been fixed.

• In case you see a problem with the fix, please comment on this issue.
• In case you see a similar problem, please open a separate issue.
• If you are happy with the outcome, don’t hesitate to support Weblate by making a donation.

[thgoebel]

Thank you for the fast response!

Oops, I did not notice the stray quote at the beginning, my bad. I have remove it (https://gitlab.com/Nulide/findmydevice/-/merge_requests/278). This has fixed the issue, hosted Weblate now shows the %s in the English locale again.

I'm not sure how Android handles quotes in general, I would need to do some testing. In this specific case, the String that is returned by calling context.getString(R.string.cmd_camera_response_success, serverUrl) has the quotation mark removed, and the %s expanded with the value of serverUrl.