[translations] Use of variables in t()

[Derek Wright]

On Dec 23, 2008, at 10:42 PM, Fernando P. García wrote:

> I'm sure you have a good reason to pass string $variables to t(),  
> instead of "strings".
>
> What current potx does is to respect(and honor) the Drupal coding  
> starndards. So the "good practice" is to use t("string") for text  
> translation.

Yes, but there are a few cases where it's impossible to do so, and  
I've hit one of them.

> What I suggest is to create a tin 4 lines alias function:
...

But if someone happens to install two modules that define the same  
tr() function, they get PHP errors on duplicate function definitions.   
For this to be a viable work-around, it needs to be in your module's  
namespace, such as mymodule_tr().  I'm not sure that's fundamentally  
more readable than just doing:

$tr = 't';
$tr($foo);

And, the extra mymodule_tr() function invocation adds even more  
overhead than the variable...


Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated on this thread, very  
illuminating.

For anyone interested in the PHPdoc improvements, I posted the issue  
(with patches) here:
http://drupal.org/node/350708

Cheers,
-Derek (dww)