Please add translator comments for a few tough strings

[TLE]

Hallo Dylan

While proofreading a translation of gnome-break-timer I ran into the following strings, that I think for various reasons could use a translator comment.

In general, you cannot depend on the same language (sentence) constructions being possible in all the languages of the world, so be very careful about breaking sentences up or putting one translation into another, because it might not work.

#: ../helper/microbreak/MicroBreakView.vala:61
#, c-format
msgid "You were due to take a micro break %s ago"

#: ../helper/restbreak/RestBreakView.vala:95
#, c-format
msgid "You were due to take a break %s ago"

#: ../helper/restbreak/RestBreakView.vala:81
#, c-format
msgid "%s of break remaining"

#: ../settings/MicroBreakType.vala:42
#, c-format
msgid "Take a break from typing and look away from the screen for %s."

Please specify _exactly_ what kind of time indications may be substituted into these strings, so the translator can evaluated whether such a construction are possible/correct in their language.

#: ../settings/RestBreakType.vala:78
msgid "Your next full break is in"

This looks remakably like a sentence that has been split up, which is a bad idea: https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Never%20split%20sentences (More good advice here: https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines)

However (continued below) ...

#: ../settings/TimerBreakType.vala:174
msgid "Every"

#: ../settings/TimerBreakType.vala:182
msgid "For"

... in some cases, like if it is a sentence that is created by including several drop down boxes into it, then there may be no other option (I know for a fact that the evolution guys had somewhat of a headache internationalizing the calendar recurrence dialog "Repeat appointment every [interval] [untill/for][endpoint/number_of_recurrences]"). But, if this is the case here, then please describe it in a comment, so that we will know why we may have to accept that it will be difficult to translate.

A completely unrelated issues is that "for" is quite ambiguous as a single word. In the context, I will probably be able to guess, but it is better if I don't have to

#: ../settings/TimerBreakType.vala:178
#, c-format
msgid "%s frequency"

#: ../settings/TimerBreakType.vala:186
#, c-format
msgid "%s duration"

These could also use a description of what will be substituted in and if it is another translation of say micro break, the I think it is better to make completely new strings, as the substitution may not me possible.

Regards Kenneth

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

Okay, the time substitutions are especially problematic, indeed. I created a different bug report for those, bug #1226330, because I know my solution for most of the other problems (translator comments, and just removing unused strings) won't do much good :)

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

Thank you for all the detailed information, by the way! I'm still going through it and there's a lot of stuff I'll still need to fix, but I think this commit should cover a lot of it:

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-break-timer/commit/?id=187842d3336cd0c6c85a4c8337000928cbec20c6

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

Thank you again for this bug report :)

I'm closing this as it is rather stale (and hopefully fixed by now). Feel free to report future bugs at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-break-timer/-/issues.