> >
> >Also, using the primary language as the tag discourages clean
> >localization patterns, where the author of the code should be collecting
> >his locale dependent messages in one place so that translators can
> >easily translate the messages without having to seek them out in the
> >code.
>
> That's a tools issue.  gettext has tools the automatically generates
> pre-translation files, containing each message to be translated, as
> well as its context (file and line).
Yes, but it discourages clean usage for those systems that aren't using
gettext (or similar) as a backend.  I agree that tools could be written
to remedy this problem.

> A major advantage of of using the primary language message as the tag
> is that it makes the program easier to understand, since when you
> read the program you *see* what kind of message is emitted.
> Which do you prefer:
>   (put-message 'hello user)
> or:
>   (format (gettext "Hello ~a!") user)
>
> I would find the latter more informative.

One could argue that comments could provide similar information.  I
think though that the argument of cleanly separating user interface data
and program logic is a stronger one.

	Scott