Localization framework
Hello!
Well, I just thought I'd summarize what we have so far, including my own
ideas for the said framework. This message is meant as a request for
comments and as a starting point for the discussion.
PRESENT: The localization effort is currently desasterous. There are
several tools to use, many points of entry (which noone names
explicitely), there is only a little bit of structure.
PROBLEMS: There is no way for a translator (who is usually not a geek or
maybe even not a user) to get into the translation process easily. One
possibility is to read tons of README's, man pages and help files to at
least understand how he can get to the translation templates. IF, after
learning CVS, SVN, 'apt-get source' and so on, he manages to translate
_anything_, he has got a problem of committing this. This often requires
write access to CVN/SVN or a bug report or some other weird way of getting
work included. Even if this is done, there is no easy way to track the
includsion of his work.
SOLUTION: Debian needs a l10n infrastructure. It should be as easy to use
for the translator as possible - most preferably something as
uncomplicated as SVN checkout -> KBabel -> translate -> SVN commit. This
should be valid for everything to be translated, so that the translators
do not get confused.
ORGANIZATION OF THE SUB-PROJECTS: Each language should get an Alioth (or
whatever) project, with an SVN (I guess, this should be used) repository
on svn.debian.org and a mailing list for discussions at lists.debian.org.
The SVN should be populated automagically with gettext's .po files for the
according language. The structure of the SVN tree should be discussed, I
have only a vague idea of this. The translators (or at least _active_
translators) become the administrators of the project and try to
coordinate this a bit.
TRANSLATION NEEDS: Debian currently supports about 11-12 hardware
architectures and the current in-development installer supports about 30
languages. Anything apart from the installer, is in the state "partly
translated" to "not translable at all". This definitely needs to change.
Things which need to be translated (in no particular order):
1. Debconf templates, which contain questions to the users
2. Package descriptions
3. www.debian.org
4. Documentation (including man pages, NEWS.Debian, almost everything
under /usr/share/doc/$PACKAGE)
5. The software itself (not sure about this one, is out of scope of the
Debian project)
6. ??? (to be continued)
How to populate the SVN repository in each case:
1. This (as well as 5.) can be extracted from unstable with the help of
Denis Barbier's scripts (/materials/*)
2. There used to be a project to coordinate this, I don't know how they
implemented that, but in any case, gettext'ization is needed. Depends on
dpkg's support for this feature - the descriptions could be then extracted
in barbier's scripts (I hope, this would be not too difficult to patch
your scripts accordingly, Denis)
3. This should get gettext'ized somehow. The current way of managing this
is a mess, as far as I can tell. There is something called po4a out there,
could this be used? Same for 4., this has been discussed before for the
NEWS.Debian files, as far as I remember, without a conclusion.
5. Should be easy (if gettext'ized, KDE has their own translators), could be overkill :)
BACKLINE: The package generating scripts could be patched so that they
query the database (which could be later generated from SVN data) for
translations automatically and put them into place. Should be discussed
futher.
PROBLEMS: Upstream changes templates. We'd get to translate them only
_after_ the initial upload of the new version. Any ideas?
So, that's all for now, I'm a little bit in a hurry ;) Please write your
comments, I know I'm too idealistic sometimes, but I think we need to
start intensive discussion ;)
--
Nikolai Prokoschenko
nikolai@prokoschenko.de / Jabber: pronik@jabber.org
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