Patch to w.d.o/intl/index.wml
Hello, here is a patch I've just written to this page, but I would like to
have your agreement before to commit. Should I make a new page for that ? If
yes, where ?
Bye, Mt.
Index: index.wml
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/webwml/webwml/english/international/index.wml,v
retrieving revision 1.26
diff -u -r1.26 index.wml
--- index.wml 2000/09/08 13:07:56 1.26
+++ index.wml 2001/01/26 09:55:32
@@ -19,6 +19,129 @@
page that explains <A href="../intro/cn">how to set up the preferred language for
your browser</A>.
+<H2>The program messages</h2>
+
+<p>A lot of program packaged in Debian use a way to translate the messages
+displayed to the user. A program has this ability when the source are
+modified use catalogs of translations for its messages (this modification
+is a part of the internationalization process). It is said localized to a
+given language when this catalogs have been translated to this
+language. The most often used system of message catalogs is based on the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html";>gnu gettext
+library</a>.
+
+<p>Making Debian more and more international require to keep theses
+catalogs up to date. But Debian is not alone in the world, and most of the
+programm packaged in Debian are developped by other individual, or other
+groups. And some of them have their own team of translators. In this case,
+it is really important to coordinate our effort with them, and avoid to
+translate the same thing several time. That's why you should check twice
+that the material you plan to translate is not already translated
+elsewhere. For that, here is a list of other teams pages to visit before
+working :
+
+<ul>
+ <li>The <a href="http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/";>GNU
+Translation Project</a>.
+ <li>The <a href="http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/";>GNOME
+Translation Project</a>.
+ <li>The <a href="http://i18n.kde.org/";>KDE Translation Project</a>.
+ <li>The <a href="http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/l10n.php3";>Mandrake-soft
+page about internationalisation</a>.
+ <li>The <a href="http://www.linuxi18n.org/";>Linux i18n Project</a>.
+ <li>The <a href="http://www.li18nux.org/";>Li18nux group</a>.
+</ul>
+
+<p>If the program you plan to translate is big enough, there is also good
+chances that the translating effort of this programm have its own page on
+the net. For example, for Mozilla, check
+<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/docs/refList/i18n/";>this page</a>.
+
+<p>Finally, contact the Debian mailling list about your language before to
+work, and look for bugs reports against this package containing the
+translation.
+
+<p>After you've maid sure no one else is working on the same po file, you
+should get this file. For that, you can download and unpack manually the
+sources of the package, or directly get it from the <a href="l10n">Debian
+Translation Center</a>.
+
+<p>Once you've got the po file, translate it. There is a
+<a href="http://i18n.kde.org/translation-howto/index.html";>good HOWTO</a>
+on the kde web site about this point, and of course, the
+<a href="http://www.gnu.org/manual/gettext/index.html";>gettext manual</a>
+is quite useful too.
+
+<p>The step after the translation is to check the correctness of the
+file. You can use a spell checker like ispell, but this is not
+enough. Ispell can't check grammatical errors, and I know no free software
+to do that. You'll have to seek for human reviewers. You must also check
+the structure of the po file. For that, simply run <tt>msgfmt --check
+--verbose --statistics -o /dev/null</tt> and correct all reported errors.
+
+<p>Then, you should give back your work. If the translated program has its
+own translation project, please see with them. If not, you should submit a
+bug report (marked patch) against the Debian package. For that, send a mail
+to <tt>submit@bugs.debian.org</tt>. Choose a nice subject (like 'german po
+file [patch]') and write in the first line of the mail body :
+
+<pre>
+Package: PACKAGENAME
+Version: THE VERSION
+</pre>
+
+<p>(of course, you should remplace the uppercase word with the good
+value). The rest of the mail should contain the translated file. Send it,
+that's it. You've translated a po file and gived it back. Thanks !
+
+<h2>The debconf templates</h2>
+
+<p>Debconf, the Debian package configuration system, is used by maintainer
+to ask configuration questions to user. Theses questions can (and should)
+be translated too.
+
+<p>Coordinating the efforts is easier than for po files, because only the
+Debian project use them. You can get them from the <a href="l10n">Debian
+Translation Center</a> too. Giving them back follows the same procedure
+(through bug repports). But translating them is a bit special. Here are
+the instructions given in the file README.translators from the debconf
+package :
+
+<quote>
+<p>The [file] you should translate is debian/templates, generating a
+debian/templates.<lang> file. This is specific to debconf. To
+generate a skeleton debian/templates.<lang> file, you can simply run:
+
+<p><tt>debconf-getlang <lang> debian/templates > debian/templates.<lang></tt>
+
+<p>Then edit the generated file, and fill in translations for all the empty
+lines. When I change the main templates file, you can merge in my changes
+via the debconf-mergetemplate command:
+
+<p><tt>debconf-mergetemplate debian/templates debian/templates.<lang> > new</tt>
+
+<p>Then edit the new file. There is not currently a really easy way to see
+what parts have changed and need their translations updated, but you
+can always use diff.
+</quote>
+
+<p>Last word about the syntax of templates: The first <tt>Description-line</tt> is like a headline. You're not allowed to continue the first line on others. For example, the next template is wrong:
+<pre>
+Template: autolog/note
+Type: note
+Description: Autolog daemon will start logging out users if it wants to,
+ but it's not sure. Will see if it's nice today.
+ The autolog daemon will be activated now and will log users out
+ after two hours of idle time. If you do not want this then either uninstall
+ autolog or customize /etc/autolog.conf and /etc/rc.d/autolog according to
+ your needs.
+</pre>
+
+<p>The short description goes on two lines, but debconf will only use the
+first line a short description, and the rest as long. Furthermore, don't
+make the short description too long! (the specs put the limit to "50
+characters or so").
+
<H2>Adding support for a new language</H2>
<P>Debian is run completely by volunteers. If we don't currently support
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