Roman Joost wrote: > Hi folks, > > after LGM with a lot of feedback, I would like to propose a structural > change on how we're currently write documentation. > > I want to propose to use gettext for translations and use only one > reference language for our manual. My last inquiry on the mailing list > showed, that most of you were really annoyed by the mixed up languages > in the XML files. Back in 2003, it was a new attempt of writing > documentation, but it turned out to be hardly maintainable with > a big learning curve for new contributors. > > Why gettext? > It is currently a widespread technique to provide translations for > documentation. The free software community provides a wide set of usable > tools for translators. > > Of course, I'm fully aware of the possible drawbacks of this approach. > We need a migration strategy to migrate the current content and set a > reference language. I'd propose English, because every author who want > to introduce new content need to write it in English first and translate > it afterwards. > > After this migration, we concentrate only on one manual (instead of 8 or > 12 currently) and we will be able get new contributors (because of the > lower barrier and people who already provide translation for gnome-docs > can also provide translations to our manual). We have to roles involved > in the creation process: authors and translators. Every contributor can > decide on which side he want to be. Even both will work, like > currently... > > I would very welcome to get a lot of feedback from you. The wiki would > probably the best place to write down a migration strategy (what will > happen with the screenshots for example?) > > PS: See also my blog entry about my thoughts on this: > http://romanofskiat.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/lgm-aftermathnowlgm-aftermath/ > > Greetings, > According to the applause from the other writers, it seems that gettext will be fine. I have no knowledge of gettext, but understand that it is much the same as poEdit which I am using to edit po(t) files and creating mo files. If that's the case, it is only possible to edit one paragraph at a time. In my opinion a great drawback. When translating I use the other languages as a reference (if I understand them of course). Is this not possible with gettext? poEdit (gettext?) is OK for shorter paragraphs, but somewhat frustrating when you need to read several lines of text, perhaps together with some text in the previous para. Another problem: I'm still using Windows. If I can't use poEdit, is there a simple way to install and run gettext on this OS? Something like the installer for GIMP. If I need some extra packages, which? I looked at "http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/install.html"; but found this site too fuzzy at the first glance. But perhaps I'll study it more seriously one rainy day in the future ;-) and get some better understanding. I'm using CygWin for my translation work on GIMP, if that matter. Have a nice day Kolbjørn _______________________________________________ Gimp-docs mailing list Gimp-docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-docs
