which i18n function to use?

[Dave Peticolas]

Christian Stimming writes:
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> 
> Just a question before I mess up thing even more: What is the difference 
> between the string translation functions (_ "some text") and (N_ "some 
> text") ? 
> 
> And in what cases are we supposed to use which one? As far as I understood 
> one of them should be used for strings that are some kind of keys, i.e. 
> are used to look up some element in a list, and the other version is for 
> strings which are only displayed but not used any further, e.g. 
> tooltip/help strings. I thought the former is (N_ ) and the latter is (_ ) 
> . Is this correct or did I get something wrong?

You are correct. N_ returns the string argument it is given, and _
returns the translated version. With respect to the help strings in
options, those strings are run through gettext just before display,
and they've always been written with N_, even though they aren't used
as keys. I went through and looked for i18n problems in the reports
last night, and I think I changed some of the help strings to use N_
just to be consistent with prior usage.

dave