So instead of outsource the information (developer, translator,
language-info, etc.) from the source code to external rbuild files,
keep the data in place where it belongs to.
It's the parsers job to parse the source and extract it, and put it
together in a meaningful way (generate static output, be it xml or
html).
In my opinion is just the opposite, move the information where it really
belongs, when you talk about a developer or a translator working in a piece
of code you refer them in a particular context , in this case a whole
module, the same for mantainers or translators , they are global to the
module.
Once again, the data extracted from parsing is not TRUE metadata just
meaningless strings that you can guess or interpret : "author : jdoe" ,
"author : jhondoe" , "author : jhon doe" are 3 different persons and
<author>Jhon Doe</author> just one , I think it's obvious.
I disagree here. IMO information about developers and translators belong to svn. They should neither go into the sources nor into rbuild files. If you want to find out about it, ask svn and it will tell you the exact name. We also don't really have maintainers for most modules, so most rbuild files would be spammed with the names of lots of developers without saying anything about who wrote a paticular piece of code.