RE: Project Start

["James R. Johnson" <modean52 comcast net>]

So, which is the newest GNOME?

JAmes

-----Original Message-----
From: gnome-i18n-bounces gnome org [mailto:gnome-i18n-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Christian Rose
Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 7:55 PM
To: Telsa Gwynne
Cc: 'GNOME I18N List'
Subject: Re: Project Start

lör 2004-08-07 klockan 09.10 skrev Telsa Gwynne:
> There is a guide to (parts of :)) getting started which Daf and I put 
> together. Which we probably need to update. But we did discuss this a 
> little in that.
> 
> It's in gnome-i18n/l10n-guide/C/l10n-guide.xml
[...]
> <para>
> It is probably best to pick something very small the first time, in 
> order to get used to the translation tools you are using. It is also 
> useful to pick something which is an application rather than a 
> library. This way, you will be able to run the application and see 
> what it looks like. So a small stand-alone application is a good choice.
> </para>

Yes, but after one has translated those small standalone applications to
test things out, I think it's probably helpful if one continues with some
core libraries, like gtk+ and libgnomeui. The reason being that those
libraries have messages that appear all over the place and in many
applications.
So perhaps it should already here be mentioned that small standalone
applications isn't everything. ;-)

 

> <para>
> Unless you are running GNOME built from CVS on your machine, you are 
> likely to have the most recent stable release on it. Therefore, it is 
> a good idea to translate the appropriate version of the application. 
> So if you have <application>bug-buddy-2.4</application> on your 
> machine, use the 2.4 branch of the 
> <application>bug-buddy</application> module in CVS. If you use a 
> different version, some of the strings will have changed, and when you
test it, you won't see all of your translations.
> </para>

I'm not sure I agree with this piece of advice.

In my experience it's not uncommon for people to use versions of GNOME that
are almost ancient and long since forgotten by the GNOME development
community, like, say, GNOME 2.0 and GNOME 2.2 these days, or even GNOME 2.4.
Internet connectivity is expensive in many areas, and so downloading the
latest and greatest distro with the most recent stable version is out of the
question. Hence people often rely on what software they can get from
magazine CDs and the like, and software on magazine CDs are quite naturally
not really often as uptodate as one would want it to be.

Anyway, what I want to say is that if a new team starts translating GNOME
2.4 (or even GNOME 2.6) today, by the time they are done and happy with the
translations, the rest of the GNOME community will be working on the GNOME
2.10 release or something, and those fresh GNOME 2.4 translations will be of
very little use since so much has changed by that time.

Moreover, that team will have wasted a lot of time translating stuff that is
perhaps no longer present anymore, and their translations will never be as
complete and shiny as they maybe expect them to be since there will never be
made releases of GNOME 2.4/2.6 anymore at that time, where those
translations would have shined.
So the shiny, complete GNOME 2.4/2.6 translations the team has carefully
produced, reviewed, tested and gotten input from linguists on, may in fact
by that time end up being only 60% or even 50% complete and miss out on a
lot of new important messages that have come since then.
This has actually happened -- some teams have in the past been very proud of
their complete or supported translations, perhaps not fully realizing that
those complete or supported translations were made for an old GNOME version
that will never again have releases made.

Thus, I think it's always better to advise new teams to start with whatever
is the latest unstable version, and fetch the potfiles for that from the
translation status pages. That increases the chances that whenever the team
is done whatever translations they have produced are still relevant and can
be used, and still have a decent chance of being as complete as one maybe
expects them to be from having translated them.

Yes, it's difficult to test a new translation with old software, as some of
the strings will never show up translated since they have changed between
the versions. But you can test some of it, and at least get an idea of what
it looks like, and catch some of the problems in time. And at the same time
the translations are current and have a decent chance of being useful in the
latest version.

I thus think we should advise all new teams to jump on the current train,
instead of spending time on waggons/releases we've long since left behind.


[...]
> So I'd go for something like bug-buddy, gcalctool or gnome-utils as 
> small stand-alone applications to get the hang of the tools.

gedit is also a popular starter application, especially for languages that
require advanced script rendering. It makes for a good screenshot of pango's
abilities with such a script, both with the translation and the document
displayed.


> And then libgnomeui, which contains all the stuff for toolbars and 
> menus and buttons (Edit, View, New, Open a file, Save as..)

Yes, definately. And I think the importance of gtk+ cannot be downplayed.
For RTL languages it's outright essential to at least start with some parts
of gtk+ right from the start, since the RTL setting itself is in the gtk+
translation... Also, the gtk+ translation also defines some other stuff that
is useful for many languages.


> Once you have those submitted, you will find a webpage generated as 
> http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.8/ang/index.html (assuming ang is 
> your code. You can substitute cy or en_GB or da for that to get a look 
> at what they look like and what info they contain).

The "ang" status web page appears as soon as the first ang translation is
committed to CVS. That's part of why I think new teams should try to get
some translations committed as soon as they can. Another reason for this is
that partial translations in CVS or released software is often the best
motivator for getting even more volunteers to want helping out with making
them complete. :-)


Cheers,
Christian

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