[Freecats-Dev] [Fwd: Re: About translating documents (.xml/.sgml) in GNOME]

[Simos Xenitellis]

I am forwarding this e-mail. It's an answer to an e-mail I sent about
quick and dirty xml/sgml <=> po conversion in order to kickstart the
Greek translations.

I must note that there is a strong emphasis for interoperability with
gettext. This could be different from the CATS aims for a complete aided
translation package.

At the archives you will find an early 'technical description' of the
effort
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2003-January/msg00413.html)

For the full extent of the discussion, check the mail archives of the
GNOME lists at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/
(lists: address@hidden, address@hidden)

-----Προωθημένο Μήνυμα-----

From: Malcolm Tredinnick <address@hidden>
To: Simos Xenitellis <address@hidden>
Cc: GNOME Documentation List <address@hidden>, address@hidden, address@hidden
Subject: Re: About translating documents (.xml/.sgml) in GNOME
Date: 30 Jan 2003 11:07:59 +1100

[Including gnome-i18n again, since I would like comments from
translators. Also including Jeff, since he and I were discussing this
proposal just over a week ago and he hasn't seen the written spec.]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 07:54:27PM +0000, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> I am interested in the translation of .xml/.sgml files in GNOME 2.2
> and I would like to ask if:
>       1. ...the following procedure using sgml2po is ok.

Some discussion on this below (but I have no clear opinion on the
viability, since I am not a translator).

>       2. ...is there a list of docs to translate first?

Short answer: no. However, for maximum usefulness, my guess would be to
start with the user documentation for popular applications (where you
get to choose what is "popular").

This might be a good opportunity to float another approach to this
problem. I looked at DV and Jonathans' work last year and I didn't think
it entirely met the requirements we might have. So I sat down and wrote
out a specification of what might be in such a tool (a documentation
version of intltool, essentially).

I have attached a fairly different approach to the problem from Simos'
which I would appreciate some feedback on. My main problem is that I am
not a translator, so while I have tried to incorporate what I see as the
main issues, there may be things I don't realise just because I don't
speak Norwegian or something like that.

As an aside, one of the motivations of this approach was to also make it
easy to translate websites without requiring special markup in the HTML.

I have code for some of the following (mostly extracting the strings for
translation and constructing something that is pretty close to a valid
.po file). If people cannot shoot too many holes in my method I will
continue down this path, although that does not help Simos with his
immediate problem of translating _now_.

Probably I should point out that the main problem I see in Simos'
approach is that you will get a lost of unnecessary stuff in the .po
file, which looks like it will interfere with smooth translations. Also,
I could not see how some of the "issues to be resolved" were addresses
by that code (to be fair, the authors mentioned at the time that it was
a prototype of an idea).

Malcolm

-- 
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
-- 
Simos Xenitellis <address@hidden>