Antwort: git-gui i18n introductory document

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] schrieb am 26.07.2007 08:14:03:

I also noticed that po/ directory lacks
any guidance document for translators.  Here is an attempt to
add po/README.

Thanks for this write-up. This is very nice, and I agree it is helpful for
everyone working on the translations.

FYI, in the gnucash project we have a similar write-up, only that over time
we were asked to cover pretty much any subject that came up, so the
document ended up quite long. See http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Translation

One topic that hasn't been covered but should be added is the po/glossary/
directory. I'd suggest to point new translators to there *first*, because
getting the glossary right is a necessary condition for achieving a
high-quality translation.

I understand that Christian's stance on this issue, to put it
bluntly, is that you should not be in the l10n business if you
are not versed with gettext toolchain.

I wouldn't require someone to be "versed". But I would indeed require
someone to 1. have the gettext toolchain *installed* (after all, that
person also must have git installed), and 2. I'd strongly recommend to work
on the po files with one of the specialized *po file editors* instead of a
plain text editor. There are so many editors available: emacs po-mode,
KBabel, poedit, GTranslator; it definitely shouldn't be difficult to use at
least one of them.

Nevertheless, explaining the po file structure here in the README is a good
thing in itself.

Some comments on your explanation in the file itself:

+0. Getting started.
+
+You would first need to have a working "git".  Your distribution
+may have git-core package (do not get "GNU Interactive Tools" --
+that is a different "git").  Please install it.

You should mention the gettext package (required for .msg creation) and one
of the po editors here as well.

+ - Control characters, such as newlines, are written in
+   backslash sequence
+
+ - A long message can be split across multiple lines by ending
+   the string with a doublequote, and starting another string on
+   the next line with another doublequote.

Good points. Additionally, we need to explain the [format...] arguments
here, i.e. what to do with a "%s" or "%i" or "%%" in the string.

+You can test the result by running "make", which would create
+po/af.msg file, and then running the resulting git-gui in your
+locale:
+
+   $ make install
+   $ LANG=af git-gui

Does the latter line give the newly created translation for you, even
without "make install"? For me and from what I understand from the code,
the message catalogs are searched for in the subdirectory msgs/ of the lib/
directory, which means they wouldn't be found in an unmodified checkout.
But you can create a symlink of that name to have the checkout use directly
the po/ directory, like so:

   cd lib
   ln -s ../po msgs
   cd ..
   LANG=jp ./git-gui.sh

and I also have to call the local git-gui with ./ because . is not in my
PATH, which is probably the same for some people out there as well.

+   $ edit po/af.po
+   ... be sure to update Last-Translator: and
+   ... PO-Revision-Date: lines.

Yes, thanks for the reminder here.

+ - The original text in English of an older message you already
+   translated might have been changed.  You will notice a
+   comment line that begins with "#, fuzzy" in front of such a
+   message.  msgmerge tool made its best effort to match your
+   old translation with the message from the updated software,
+   but you will find it matched your old translated message to a
+   new msgid that does not make any sense -- you would need to
+   fix them.

Yes. You should also mention here that a msgstr marked as "#, fuzzy" will
be treated as if no translation existed at all by msgfmt. Hence, the
instructions for the translators should be something like this: "Messages
which are marked as fuzzy will not be used in the program. You have to
check the msgstr, fix it to match the msgid message, and remove the #,
fuzzy line."

Overall, this is a nice writeup and it is very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Christian

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