On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 09:20:38AM +0200, Roman Joost wrote: > > Disadvantages > > > > 1. Translator that use po files will have to precisely follow English > > content. Note, that it still will be possible to write additional > > translated content directly in source files, so I think it's a minor > > problem. > And IMHO this is our problem: we don't have a finished English > manual yet. If we want to use PO files, we need a reference to make a > translation for. DocBook provides the basis of not creating just a plain > translation of a reference manual written in a specific language. It > provides the (IMHO the advantage) possibilities to write your "own" > translated manual. Of course the structure is and should be the same, so > is the content. But if you describe e.g. the quickmask in a single > sentence or in a big article is up to you. > > So we have currently: > -> more flexibility > -> no reference language to create a translation for Well, actually I see these two as disvantages for the same reasons but from a different point of view: 1) more flexibility. I do not see any point in writing different versions of manuals for a unique program like GIMP, that for instance is written with the reference commands and strings in english so this last is the _natural_ reference. You, as everyonelse, are free to fork and create a DE-GIMP, a IT-GIMP, a FR-GIMP but again, I do not see any point in differentiate the functions and commands by language and there is not any fork in view any time soon and I really doubt that anyone will ever think to do it in the future, so this "flexibility" is totally useless and actually more a drawback. Instead I see many people in trouble since they have to re-design again and again the manual for every language because of other people that are concentrate on improving the mother tougue language more than the reference. English is not my mother toungue, you see, but I see it more as a lingua-franca, a tool, much more useful for all translators that for it by itself. 2) no reference language. So we must decide a reference language! Because we really _need_ a reference language for writing the reference manual. And we, topmost need a reference for the manual. I do not see any future without a reference just because the languages in the manual are growing every months and I, for example, do _not_ want to write a different manual for italian. I just want to _translate_ the manual into italian. It has been done a really great work with the manual structure (many thanks, I coudn't be able to do such a good work), a work that is good for every language and, infact 95% or more of the manual has the same structure in every lanuage that is translated to. I'm convincted that I, italian, like chinese people or russian ones for example, are more confident in translating text from english than from any other languages, and again, we must think more to the whole international project than to a single version of it. We must think global, the good globalization of free/opensource! > > > 2. Development will require additional tools - python and libxml2- > > python. I think it's a minor requirement. > Yep - think so as well. > > > [...] 3. > > > > 4. No way to translate images right now from po, translation should > > go directly to the content. We'll solve this technical problem later. > Excuse my ignorance, but thats always how people come up with new ideas. > I love to have new ideas and how we can improve the way we're writing > content for the manual. But new technologies come also with a lot of > disadvantages. This is _not_ a new idea. Many other groups have just resolved this problem we face, we just need the courage to first admit it as a problem to have any chance to be able to resolve it. > To make it short: I think we just don't gain any benefit of changing to > po. We will run in other problems equivalent to what we now have. This is you opinion that noone have in any other translation groups. Whenever I talk about the gimp manual describing it as a unique multilanguage group of docbook xml files, everyone laugh at me... > > > Advantages: > > > > 1. We'll lower translation contribution barrier. Translation process > > will be faster since translators won't care about docbook and will > > just use existing tools. > > > > 2. We'll track changes simpler and keep translated content up-to-date. > > > > 3. Translators won't affect each other and content writers and will > > work with their own files. > Yep - everything a *pro* of course. > > > > > Proposal > > > > I propose to apply the attached files. Basically, it modifies profiling > > the following way. If po file for language does not exist, it works > > as before. If file exists, it profiles for both $lang and en, replaces > > en with translations according to po files, and then strips untranslated > > en content. It works nicely, so I propose just to commit it and > > encourage new translators to work with po instead while keeping the > > existing content in place. For example, we can start to translate menus > > part into Russian with po files. > Did I understand that correctly that we can have the advantages of both > worlds? (Sorry haven't looked at your patch, but it'll probably cost me > another day to reply to your mail then which I don't want.) I vote YES, PLEASE! -- Marco Ciampa +--------------------+ | Linux User #78271 | | FSFE fellow #364 | +--------------------+ _______________________________________________ Gimp-docs mailing list Gimp-docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-docs
