Re: Tools to help with mnemonic l10n?

[Kenneth Nielsen <k nielsen81 gmail com>]

Den 14-01-2012 02:06, Luc Pionchon skrev:
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 02:08, Byrial Jensen <byrial vip cybercity dk
> <mailto:byrial vip cybercity dk>> wrote:
>
>     13-01-2012 19:49, Luc Pionchon wrote:
>
>         On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 12:49, Kenneth Nielsen
>         <k nielsen81 gmail com <mailto:k nielsen81 gmail com>
>         <mailto:k nielsen81 gmail com <mailto:k nielsen81 gmail com>>__>
>         wrote:
>
>             Hallo Byrial
>
>
>                 The information should be in po-file in form of some 
form of
>                 extracted
>                 comments inserted by the program which generates the
>         pot-file. That
>                 program can get the information by parsing the XML file
>         made be
>                 glade.
>
>
>             I think the problem is that not all programs in GNOME use the
>             xml-files for the program layout (Glade generated or 
otherwise).
>
>
>         the accessibility tools (atk at-spi) should be able to 
extract the
>         information from a running program.
>
>
>     Hi Luc,
>
>     I don't know this tool, but it sounds interessting. I think though
>     that it may be difficult for a tool which get information from
>     running a program to find and activate all menus and pop up-windows
>     etc. which accept key mnemonics. That's very difficult even for a
>     human tester.
>
>
> That's what GNOME accessibility technologies are doing. It allows to
> navigate through the tree of widgets of the UI. You should ask more
> technical people for more details.
>
>
>         But I think that the best way to go is to set a requirement for
>         developers.
>         For example to write translator comments, as proposed by Byrial
>         (see below)
>
>
>     Well my proposal was that a tool should generate these comments by
>     examing the interface code if possible.
>
>
> I meant the translator comments that you proposed:
>  > #. Mnemonic group "Search menu" with 3 items.
>
>
>     It would be very hard to get the developers to make such comments
>     manually.
>
>
> yes or no.
> It's a matter of asking. "If you want your application well translated,
> indicate mnemonic groups to the translators" or so...


No disrespect but judging from experience, of how well the developers 
follow the current guidelines for i18n in the first go, this is more no 
than yes. It's going to be a decade long effort, what's more is that 
quite a few developers will (somewhat justified) object that to many 
such comments clutters up the code. I think automatic generation is 
definitely the way to go here.

In any case I have had a quick look at the intltool-extract tool, which 
is the tool that extracts those strings from e.g. the glade files, and 
as far as I understand the code (this was my first look _ever_ at a perl 
script). I didn't figure out the logic for finding the strings, whether 
they traverse the entire tree or simply searches for the ones marked for 
translation, but in any case I guess it should be possible to modify it. 
That being said, it would definitely be preferable if we could get one 
of the authors to do it, or just someone with some perl experience as I 
have no particular desire to learn it

I think that if we here agree that it would be a good idea, and agree on 
the format of the comments, we could make a feature request or start 
looking for a developer.

Regards Kenneth

>
>
>     Besides manually made comments could easily become outdated or
>     deviate from the standard, so they couldn't be parsed by po file
>     checkers.
>
>     And if the interface code is generated by glade or similar, the
>     developers simply may not be able to comment manually.
>
>
>     - Byrial
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