[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: New translation system

[Torinthiel]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 11:39:50AM +0200, Andriy N. Gritsenko wrote:
> >btw, speaking of translators, they probably should participate in the
> >selection/design of a translation system ...

I did already ;)

>     Get my 5 cents. As one of translators I've found the gettext .po
> format VERY preferrable. Reasons:
> 
> 1) it checks string formats for me (i.e. each printf macro %s etc.);
> 2) it notifies me if there were changes in the string (fuzzy notify);
> 3) it merges untranslated/changed strings into translation file so I don't
>    need the hell of copypasting them from diff;
> 4) it automatically includes all transtateable strings so no programmer
>    need to allocate unused #define and move it into base translation (see
>    also previous reason).

It's not about .po FORMAT, it's about .po TOOLS. Well, 1) is actually
about a necessary tool, as it's .po -> .mo converter, but rest are only
.po modification tools, and are good only if you use them.

If anything based on the current system is proposed, it will be hard to
use them, as right now the .po files (or whatever) will be generated
from .h files (I don't find it a requirement, only quite probable), and
so you can throw out all .po merge tools.

But if anything completely new will be done, we have a full choice of
tools. .po has quite nice ones, agreed.

OTOH, I find .po format convenient for validating translation, as it has
both original and translation next to each other, so I can easily
proofread the translation. This can be done with any such format, but
has a price: 24*132KB=3MB of bloat (duplicated strings).

> So from translator's point of view gettext system is the best one.

Maybe not the best, but good. IMHO the Qt translations system works as
well. Yes, I know it's C++, and I'm not proposing to use it. It's just
a format for storing translations. And current system of .h files works
for me, esp. since I can generate .po files for proofreading.
Torinthiel

-- 
 Waclaw "Torinthiel" Schiller       GG#: 3073512
   torinthiel(at)megapolis(dot)pl
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