Re: [PATCH] Internationalization of git-gui

----- Original Message ----
From: Christian Stimming <redacted>
To: Brett Schwarz <redacted>
Cc: Paolo Ciarrocchi <redacted>; Shawn O. Pearce <redacted>; Johannes Schindelin <redacted>; git@vger.kernel.org
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 2:40:27 PM
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Internationalization of git-gui

Am Freitag, 20. Juli 2007 20:34 schrieb Brett Schwarz:

quoted

After the glossary of terms has been create, it is easy to create the
catalog file (assuming we use Tcl's standard mechanism). Each locale should
have it's own file, named <locale_name>.msg (for example, es.msg for
spanish). Inside that file, you just create entries for each glossary term
(the below assumes that the msgcat namespace was imported):

  mcset es Hello Hola
  mcset es "Hello %s" "Hola %s"

I beg your pardon, but I think you grossly misunderstood what I meant
by "glossary". So before we end up in further confusion, let me clarify how
the general translation approach works. I'll use gettext wording because
that's what I know (from being the i18n guy in the gnucash project), but you
can easily insert any other wording you like here.

Ok, perhaps I did misunderstand you. From below, now I do understand...thanks.

 

#1 For the translation in general, there is the set of all user-visible
strings in the source language (here: english). In gettext terms this is
called the "PO template file", git-gui.pot, also called the message template
file. This set of to-be-translated strings needs to be extracted from the
source code, which can be done by the xgettext program.

#2 For each target language, there is a human-readable mapping file that maps
each source string (english) into the target language. In gettext terms this
is the "PO file", de.po and it.po and ja.po and whatnot, also called the
translation file. This is the *only* file translators actually work with.
Gettext uses its PO file format here and a plethora of different tools exist
to help translators editing these files. (Examples: emacs po-mode,
KBabel, ...)

#3 For each target language, the translation files are converted to a
(potentially not human-readable) "compiled" mapping file, which is then read
at program runtime and used for the actual translation. For the gettext po
file format, the msgfmt program can convert this to Tcl's .msg files.

If I understand correctly, your above suggestion implies that for Tcl msgcat,
the file in #2 and #3 are one and the same? In my opinion this might make
sense if and only if that file format is supported by at least as many
translation tools and offers as flexible translation updates as gettext's po
file format does. From my experience the po file format indeed offers a bunch
of features that other translation file formats are missing but which are of
significant help to the translator. That's why I would strongly suggest to do
the actual translation inside a po file, and have it converted to the msg
file afterwards.

Yes, for the msgcat files, you create just the mapping files...that's it. No intermediate steps. So, a workflow would look something like this:

1) Somebody creates the initial "template" file. This is usually in the source's language (i.e. english). This too is just a msgcat file. Note that this file is not strictly necessary, but helps other translators.

2) A translator copies the template file, to their target language file, and edits the text:
    # cp en.msg es.msg
    # vi es.msg
    this
        mcset en Hello Hello
    get's changed to this
        mcset es Hello Hola
    etc

That's it. There is no compilation needed, and no need for a makefile entry.

Now, even though I think this approach is alot more simplier and straight forward, I do recognize that alot of people are probably accustomed to the po format, and since the actual generation of the msgcat files are only done by the maintainer, I don't really have anything against using the po format.

I know it's already been decided to use the po format, but I just wanted to make sure to follow up on this email.

Thanks,
    --brett




       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow