[Bf-docboard] Interface translation

[Erwan JACQ]

Franz Rogar a écrit :

>The "Interface" doc, I think, it should be part of the new "Manual",
>into part I.
>
>The i18n process, with the creation of a new fresh PO file, should be
>into the "Hack Guide". For the creation, you can visit [1], the
>bf-docboard-es i18n project. It's a bit outdate (since October)
>because we're waiting to Ton finish the Tuhopuu GUI translation and
>the adition of the SoC. Into that page, there's a full Guide ("GUÍA",
>in spanish) that covers almost the full process of creation. If you
>have any question about i18n in Blender, you can ask me directly to
>this e-mail address.
>
>Note: i18n & l10n in Blender have 4 nice bugs that need to be fixed. I
>asked with Ton to try to fix them, but... I'm not able to compile
>Blender so I dropped it.
>
>Note: All PO files in the SVN/CVS are very very very very outdated,
>missing many of the strings, hacks and the Python scripts. So I think,
>when 2.40 was released, we can join to make a new "official" template
>file (aka PO) to translate the full GUI. What do you think?.
>
>[1] http://perso.wanadoo.es/rogar59
>
I find your website very good to help translate po files. I would be 
pleased to join to write a good template of po file. However, i don't 
understand Spanish (or so little). From what i have seen, it's very hard 
to keep a well po file with all additions and modifications into the 
official interface. At least, it is not possible for one guy to 
supervise all the translation of the interface. The CVS process is not 
well suited for that also. Because, translation never finishes, there is 
always a word or a sentence that need to be added. That's why i 
attempted to get through a wiki process. However it's not the best 
solution.

As you said, i18n has bugs. I think it would be cool if labels that do 
not fit into the buttons space get automatically font size smaller to 
fit in, instead of switching to english labels. Grrr. There is also a 
lot of labels which get tricky to translate in po file cause they use 
"interspace" before or after the label. Ex: "UV/Image Editor ". This 
makes duplicate labels.

I dream we could make a project where:
- 1 team works to resolve annoying bugs into the official blender source 
to get the best po file template.
- 1 team works to get the best po file template organised by 
chapters/sections
- A website is created on a wiki process to help translators doing their 
job. I explain: The po file template is unique. Each "msgid" has an 
Identification number (ID). Each translation "msgstr" links to this ID. 
Thus translations will not be broken when original labels ("msgid") will 
change.
Ex:
A webpage with 2 frames:
Left frame : Originals labels ("msgid") organised in chapters and so on

###########################################################
###
###  Window Type
###
###########################################################
10 "Window Type"
11 "Scripts Window "
12 "File Browser "
13 "Image Browser "

Right frame : Translated labels ("msgstr"). One page for each language 
of course.

10 "Type de Fenêtre"
11 "Fenêtre de Scripts"
12 "Navigateur de Fichier"
13 "Navigateur d'Images"

The second frame is a wiki webpage so anyone could help translating the 
interface easily.
I should be possible in one click to have a compiled version of the po 
file (mo). Why? Because dealing with utf-8, gettext, etc is not so 
obvious sometimes on every platform. It's also very helpful to test on 
our computer what we have just done.
Assembling the two frame to have :

msgid "Window Type"
msgstr "Type de Fenêtre"

msgid "Scripts Window "
msgstr "Fenêtre de Scripts"

msgid "File Browser "
msgstr "Navigateur de Fichier"

msgid "Image Browser "
msgstr "Navigateur d'Images"

is not so hard is'nt it? Is it possible to "msgfmt" this text file to 
get the mo file on the server?