Yeah, we need some translators I guess to get the descriptions down below the limit.

We have this on more than one set of translations.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 4007 ***

Subject: Re:  30_text_de.cf brings up error message

bugzilla-daemon@bugzilla.spamassassin.org wrote:

> Yeah, we need some translators I guess to get the descriptions down below
> the limit.

I do not agree with this conclusion. As I already commented on another
bug ([Bug 3085] TRACKER_ID rule not very useful) some languages simply
use longer words/sentences (on average) than English.
Having no short and accurate translations of many/most computer related
English terms complicates the matter.

> We have this on more than one set of translations.

IMO, this really indicates the limit of 50 characters is too low.

I count 823 German rule description (788 unique) and 242 of them have a
length of > 50 characters, with a maximum length of 70. This was the
result of cutting away as much as I could for the release of 3.0 (I
_did_ test with --lint before I submitted the descriptions).
I doubt you can bring them _all_ under the limit of 50 characters.

ciao
     Klaus

Personally, I would be very happy to see the length restrictions on descriptions
and rule names disappear.  IMO, they were a mistake:

1. they have resulted in less readable names and descriptions, even in english.
2. lint errors from this is one of the top 5 FAQs.
3. we have a hard enough time getting descriptions for other languages, without
this limitation making it harder for translators.

How hard would it be to fix the report code to just deal with it?

Subject: Re:  30_text_de.cf brings up error message

>I do not agree with this conclusion. As I already commented on another
>bug ([Bug 3085] TRACKER_ID rule not very useful) some languages simply
>use longer words/sentences (on average) than English.
>Having no short and accurate translations of many/most computer related
>English terms complicates the matter.

Some standard rules for internationalizing software:

Creating Application Messages
When you create messages in your application, English text strings are usually shorter than equivalent text strings in other languages. The following table shows the additional average growth for strings, based on their initial length.

English length (in characters) Additional growth for localized strings 
1 to 4 100% 
5 to 10 80% 
11 to 20 60% 
21 to 30 40% 
31 to 50 20% 
over 50 10% 


At a glance, a 50 byte English string should be allowed to grow to at least 60 bytes in other languages.  In this case I'd personally allow it to grow to 70 characters at least.  

I'm aware of the original goal of keeping the description and score on a single 80-character line.  However, there are cases right now where that doesn't work, and SA contains code to wrap long descriptions.  I think trying to enforce an 80 byte line limit (especially on translations) is beating a horse that was never alive in the first place, and is certainly dead now.

In fact the 50 byte limit is a pain even for English descriptions in many cases.

Subject: Re:  30_text_de.cf brings up error message

I'd accept a patch to remove the restriction for lang != en (standard
disclaimers apply).

Daniel

Hmmm.... Duplicate but of what?

It is a dup of 4007, granted all of the interesting discussion about fixing the
two bug happened here, instead of there.  I'll close that one as a dup so we
don't lose the discussion.

*** Bug 4007 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 2700 [details]
This patch allows longer lines for non-english locales

After applying my patch there are still some errors with descriptions for
non-existent rules. I opened a separate bug for these things in order to keep
the discussion focussed on the line length issue.

-> Bug 4139

sorry for spamming but it is bug 4193.

this is fixed in 3.1.0 svn trunk; the limit is now gone, and wrapping code is
used to deal with overlong descriptions.