Re: [PATCH] Internationalization of git-gui

From: Brett Schwarz <brett_schwarz@yahoo.com>
Date: Jul 20, 2007, 18:15 UTC
Message-ID: <111363.1999.qm@web38911.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

[my apologies about top posting...my mail reader sucks]

Sure, I wasn't saying there would be for sure an advantage in re-using catalogs. That's why I said it *might* be worth looking into. Just a suggestion.

I agree that a glossary should be created first. That way, translators have a common set to work with.

Just a note about string substitution. msgcat has substitution built-in, so instead of this:

    .mbar.apple add command -label [format [_ "About %s"] [appname]] \

You can do this:

    .mbar.apple add command -label [_ "About %s" [appname]] \

Thanks,
    --brett

----- Original Message ----
From: Christian Stimming <stimming@tuhh.de>
To: Brett Schwarz <brett_schwarz@yahoo.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org; Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>; Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 2:03:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Internationalization of git-gui

Quoting Brett Schwarz <brett_schwarz@yahoo.com>:

> Also, if the message catalogs are in a common location, then it   
> might be worth looking into having gitk utilize these msg catalogs   
> as well.

You mean you suggest to re-use existing msg catalogs in addition to ones that are created on our own? Well, from the i18n coordination work in another project (gnucash) I wouldn't expect any noticable benefit from doing so. The re-usable parts of translations are rather limited, basically limited to the standard menu entries and some more single-word strings (Yes/No/Cancel...). But even then re-using other translations might already decrease the quality of your own translation, because other translators of packages might already have chosen a different translation for e.g. "Cancel". For that reason I strongly suggest using one single msg catalog for one single project, so that the translator is even able to make sure each word is translated into the same translation throughout the project.

(I also strongly suggest creating and translating a glossary of the important terms before starting to translate the msg catalog itself, but that's a different issue.)

> p.s. the frink tool (http://wiki.tcl.tk/2611) is supposed to be able  
>  to convert -text and -label switches to use msgcat...it might be   
> worth looking into, instead of manually editing git-gui/gitk

Thanks for the pointer. However, the -text and -label switches can be found and edited rather easily by keyboard macros and such. More important than this are some changes that are necessary in order to obtain strings that are actually translatable, such as

-    .mbar.apple add command -label "About [appname]" \
+    .mbar.apple add command -label [format [_ "About %s"] [appname]] \

and you will agree those can only be done manually anyway.

Christian

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