[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#19049) Problematic/buggy strings.

[Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Christian Knoke wrote:
> > I know I am guilty of a particularly bad piece, the government helptext. I
> > should fix that soon by reverting back to the way it was before, with
> > static helptexts.
> I disagree here. The old static texts have been a big lot of text to
> keep up to date, with a lot of slight changes hard to track down. The
> new texts have been easy to translate and fulfill the purpose. But they
> can be improved. Make a more verbose description for some items, make
> plural forms.
>
> The main advantage of the new system (talking of 2.1, uuh?) is, that
> the new texts are potentially always correct. I'm not quite sure
> whether the ruleset data is filled in correctly in all cases, it
> should, no?
>
> Also, the texts allow ruleset *changes*.
Yes, it is *so* much easier to make ruleset changes when you don't have to 
rewrite a ton of helptext along with them. However, things have become so 
generalized that it is, I think, impossible to generate good English 
sentences in the helptext for it without mangling translations completely.
Take this example: In one ruleset I made, tiles with existing shield 
production would be given a +2 shield production bonus if the government 
was Communism and the city using the tile had a Factory. (Yes, this is 
possible with ruleset nowadays.) How would you automatically generate an 
English sentence to describe this?
Of course, one possibility is simply not to write any sentences, just use 
keywords or illustrations. (One icon can replace many words.) Like this:
  Communism:
    - Tiles +2 shields (Requires: Factory in city, Communism,
      Already producing a shield in tile)

It will be hard to avoid making such lists long, duplicated and 
complicated-sounding, though.
  - Per