Readding a string recently removed == breaking string freeze ?

[Christian Stimming]

Am Donnerstag, 18. November 2010 schrieb Mark Haanen:
> Op donderdag 18-11-2010 om 15:47 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Christian
> 
> Stimming:
> > Zitat von Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be>:
> > > This is related to bug
> > > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=634906. (...)
> > > Restoring the option also means re-introducing the translatable
> > > strings. Although they used to be translated, they aren't anymore now.
> > > So I guess restoring the option results in a string freeze break,
> > > right ?
> > 
> > Technically, yes, but it concerns only those translations which have
> > done a "msgmerge" in the time since 2.3.16. This is happened only for
> > nl.po, the Dutch translation by Mark Haanen. He's been the most active
> > translator, so I guess he will even pick up the re-adding quite fast.
> 
> I was under the impression that the translations for obsolete strings
> were kept with a ~-prefix, in which case it should pose no problem at
> all...

Theoretically, those obsolete strings are kept in the po file for precisely 
this reason. However, in practice I think it is still the case that the 
gettext tools (notably msgmerge) won't use the obsolete strings as a source 
for new translations of new strings. I think the obsolete strings are still 
more-or-less decoration.

I might be wrong, though...

Christian