Feature request: non-printing characters

[meskobalazs]

I have encountered translation files, which use non-printing characters in the translation strings. Namely optional hyphenations. I shows fine in the string list, but in the original text and translation text boxes they are invisible. AFAIK Lokalize shows these with specially coloured background.

[vslavik]

Please always include essential basics, such as platform, Poedit version etc. When you’re creating an issue that in any way relates to a specific file, please always attach said specific file.

AFAIK Lokalize shows these with specially coloured background.

You contradict yourself: an invisible character, i.e. one with zero width, can hardly have coloured background, when it has no background area...

[meskobalazs]

The affected version is 1.8.7 (the latest), on Windows.
I added a POT file, e.g. string #730 or #943 show the problem.

My problem is that there should be an option to make non-printable characters visible in the editor.

[Artoria2e5]

Just FYI, gettext feature request filed at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?47801.

[bhaible]

Indeed the attached POT file contains soft hyphens in the following lines / strings:
158:msgid "Back­ground"
208:msgid "Blue­tooth"
829:msgid "Co­lor"
1210:msgid "Dis­plays"
1354:msgid "De­tails"
1676:msgid "Key­board"
1772:msgid "Mouse & Touch­pad"
2500:msgid "Net­work"
3486:msgid "No­ti­fi­ca­tions"
3577:msgid "On­line Accounts"
3871:msgid "Po­wer"
4157:msgid "Prin­ters"
4630:msgid "Pri­va­cy"
4843:msgid "Re­gion & Lan­guage"
5071:msgid "Sha­ring"
5411:msgid "Uni­ver­sal Access"
6762:msgid "Wa­com Tab­let"

Two questions:

1. What is the purpose of having soft hyphens in a POT file?
2. Why would the translator want to see them?

A soft hyphen, here, is a place where rendering software could insert a hyphen+line break combination.

My opinion is:

1. These soft hyphens cannot help the translator, therefore they should best be filtered out when generating the POT file.
2. These soft hyphens cannot help the translator, therefore even if present in the POT file, they should remain invisible.

[vslavik]

My opinion is:

I think I agree, soft hyphens are indeed pretty useless in localisation strings (or at best, very very low priority).

BTW, Poedit already highlights important non-printable characters such as \n or \t...

[meskobalazs]

The purpose of the hyphens is to separate the syllables, so the word can be correctly broken up into multiple lines, this is not something which can be done automatically in every case. Very much like the optional hyphenations in LaTeX.

I do agree, that this is a low priority thing. However, it does help the translator