Re: GDP: translations and code comments

[John Mandereau]

Francisco Vila wrote:
> 2008/4/17, Graham Percival <address@hidden>:
> >  So I guess that if you want to translate everything,
> 
> I do. You cannot imagine how English can the docs look if something is
> in English ;)

LOL!


> There are three types of in-snippet translations: comments, text,
> lyrics and variable names (well, this makes four types).
> 
> Comments: no need to recompile if verbatim option is used, just keep
> and compile the original once, showing the translated verbatim code.
> Possible...? otoh if verbatim is not used, translating comments is not
> as important. But then, if comments show only on click, I think they
> could be completely removed, because the main text should explain it
> all.

It's possible to make lilypond-book translate comments and variable
names, and still have one lily-* snippet, through a gettext mechanism.
I estimate it'd take me 2 hours for implementing and testing this
properly.  lilypond-book would try to translate all variable names and
comments in snippets for verbatim output, and translators would simply
have to translate the desired strings in Documentation/po/LANG.po.  It
would require no more work for doc editors.  The only thing I worry
about here is how to add this mechanism without bloating up lp-book with
code that would only be useful for building Lily docs -- maybe it's time
to modularize lp-book, so we can add/replace modules (and ) for such
specific features?   Modularizing lp-book is not included in the 2
hours, the time I'd need for doing it is pretty undefined, but I might
raise this later on this list to ask for advice...

Graham, this is a solution to consider if getting rid of all comments in
snippets is too much hassle for doc editors and/or really decreases the
value of certain snippets, and besides the variable names can't be
translated while saving building time without the mechanism I propose.


> Text Markups: must translate and need recompilation.

Yes, of course, we already have this in some snippets of French docs.


> Lyrics: no need to translate unless I want Spanish traditional songs
> instead (yes, I do).

I think this is acceptable in terms of building time only if there are
not too much songs; not too much could be 10-15 IMHO.  Anyway, it is
ridiculous compared to the number of outdated snippets in translated
docs (especially French docs), please don't make statistics! :-p

Cheers,
John