On 11/07/2008, at 2:19 PM, Christian Perrier wrote (in conclusion):
(Philippe had some technical objections [about converting the manual to PO format] for what I consider minor points: I think these issues were adressed but, still, the switch to POdidn't happen).
I wonder if Philippe's needs would be better met by XLIFF, which is an XML format and thus closer to the original document format?
Using po4a and the Translate Toolkit, we could provide doc. files in either or both of XLIFF and PO: Pootle can also make files available in multiple formats.
That way we would have the benefits of using a translation format, including better management of update and review processes. Both these formats also store translation metadata, which can save a language- team a lot of effort and confusion.
In another mail of the same thread, Helge said:
When using po access to the entire (original) text is vital though. When working on man pages using po4a, I rely on reading the complete (English) man page for reference. If I had to jump to 14 hoops to read the context then po would definitly not be the right format.
I agree that access to the original text (as published) is essential. It would be useful if each L10n process for a document included a link to the original text (e.g. in the PO header), like the link to the D-I Manual online. In fact, many docs packaged with the system are also available online, so could connect the dots here and save translators some hunting around.
(Example taken from my PO header) ... "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" "Plural-Forms: nplurals=1; plural=0;\n" "X-Generator: LocFactoryEditor 1.7b3\n" "X-Doc-Reference: [link]\n" or similar? from Clytie Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team http://vnoss.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=projects:l10n
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