[Freecats-Dev] Software package of interest: KGyfieithu

[Tim Morley]

Hello to all.

First up, I ought to start with an apology for my rather lengthy absence
from the list. I'm afraid I spread my time rather too thinly over too many
projects last year, and when I had difficulties getting very far with my
FreeCATS work, I got diverted elsewhere where I was making progress.

However, I have just been pointed to the website of a piece of free (GPL)
software which certainly appears to do everything I was trying to do myself
for FreeCATS, using most of the same components, i.e. it's a server-based
database (MySQL/PHP) with a web interface allowing users to collaborate on a
translation project held on the server. Each translated segment is updated
on the server, and all other collaborators get the benefit of the
centrally-held translation memory.

It's based on the Free Software Foundation's "gettext" format (see
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html), which was designed more
for software localization than for "proper" translation. I'm not sure
whether this will end up being a handicap or not though -- essentially, both
are just a series of sentences with translated equivalents, to be
fuzzy-matched with each other.

Now, the software still in version 0.2, and the installation instructions
are, well, somewhat more complex than "Double-click the .exe file and make a
cup of tea", shall we say. But it has apparently been in use for a few
months by the KDE Welsh localization team, and according to them at least,
it does what it says on the tin.

This is the website then: http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk/index.php?lg=en

And (brace yourself) here's the manual:
http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk/manual.html.

Perhaps some of the hardcore computer science students from ENSTB could have
a go at installing it on a public web server for us to play with...?