[wp-hackers] Improving Plugin (and Theme) metadata

[Ryan Boren]

On Jan 24, 2008 3:11 PM, Jennifer Hodgdon <yahgrp at poplarware.com> wrote:
> I say: +1 on Westi's suggestion, reluctantly, since I like having just
> one plugin file with all the info at the top.
>
> However, since I didn't fully understand what Ryan was talking about
> in his latest comment on the Trac ticket, Ryan -- does this satisfy
> your concerns?
>     http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3089#comment:20

Yes. This meets those concerns.

When creating a gettext po file, we search the source for __() and
_e() and extract the strings within them.  Strings meant for
translation must be within __() or _e() somewhere in the source.  If a
plugin's files don't do __() or _e() on the metadata strings, those
strings won't be available for translation lookups.

Doing __($variable) will result in the literal string "$variable"
showing up in the po file.  We don't want that.