---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 18:32:56 +0000 From: Damien Donlon Damien.Donlon@Sun.COM To: gnome-i18n@gnome.org Subject: Gnome 2.0 Localization for Solaris

Hi All, Myself and a few others are working out the details of the localization plan for Gnome 2.0 on Solaris. Currently the plan is to do translation for all software to be included in the Gnome 2.0 Solaris release which has not already been completed by other members of the community. We will also be doing translation for the documentation and help content being provided by Sun. So far, the language list is as follows :

de German es Spanish it Italian fr French pt_BR Portugese Brazilian ja Japanese zh_CN Simplified Chinese zh_TW Traditional Chinese ko Korean pl Polish sv Swedish

We are investigating the possibility of doing some additional languages but these haven't been confirmed yet. All translations will eventually go back into the community CVS tree.

We have a number of issues which I'd be _very_ grateful to get input & feedback on. They are :

- Given the large amount of translation involved, how do you think we ought to break this up? If we take everything at once and the rest of the community continues doing translations are we going to come unstuck when we attempt to merge our translations back? I know we ought not but want to avoid as much as possible duplication of work between our translation teams and other members of the community.

We are thinking about taking it in chunks e.g 6/7 CVS modules at a time thereby reducing the incidence of this happening by having a quicker translation turnaround. What do you think of this approach as opposed to just taking the lot at once? Would community CVS tagging before our translation be useful?

- Are all modules now configured correctly to use xml-i18n-tools? Can we rely on "xml-i18n-update --pot" as capturing all localizable content within software, .desktop AND .xml files in the community CVS tree or have some CVS modules yet to be configured to use this mechanism? If so, which modules are not yet configured?

- I have seen messages like the following when I attempt to run "xml-i18n-update -pot" for certain modules :

basil% /usr/local/bin/xml-i18n-update --pot Option type requires an argument Try `xml-i18n-extract --help' for more information.

This appears to mean that I need to tell xml-i18n-extract which xml tags flag the translatable content. How do I make xml-i18n-extract 'know' which tags contain translatable content before I run xml-i18n-update i.e how do I avoid this error if I am automatically iterating through all modules generating the .pot files just using 'xml-i18n-update --pot' to generate the English .pot files?

- So far we are aware of the need to add translations to .po, .desktop and .xml files. Is there translatable content in other files? Someone mentioned .server files as containing translatable content. What are they? Are there others?

- Some .po files are not yet UTF-8 encoded. If we were to develop a mechanism for checking and converting message files to UTF-8 are we free to do so or would this have 'unforeseen' detrimental side-effects?

We'd be grateful for your feedback on these issues or any tips/caveats or warnings about potential translation pitfalls which will help ensure that our translation work goes smoothly.

Big apologies for the 'epic' length of this email! Looking forward to your replies.

Damien

����`����,��,����`��������`����,��,����`��������`���� Damien Donlon damien.donlon@sun.com 00 353 1 8199225 x19225 _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n