[Bf-committers] Probs and concequences for multilingual Blender

Rob Haarsma bf-committers@blender.org
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:06:44 +0200


Hey all,

OK, I'll keep this as short as possible. Multilingual support is now
fully operational in the Tuhopuu tree. Both freetype loaded fonts for
the interface as well as on-the-fly translations of the ui texts, work
fine for Windows and Linux. Other OS's will (hopefully) follow soon.

Problems:
1) On certain graphic cards the interface texts aren't drawn correctly.
this still remains to be fixed.
2) The toolbox/space menu has some problems with the new drawstring
method. With certain fonts, the shortcuts following the menu option are
drawn outside of the toolbox, leaving artefacts on the background views.

Consequences:
1) The home/startdir of Blender needs to contain the 'message' directory
containing the various translation tables.
2) Since the language can be chosen from the interface, some method
should be developed to keep the Language button in the binary up to date
with the newly added translation tables.
3) This method also has to update/manage the Font encodings button, if a
new translation requires a new font encoding.
4) Optional: Blender should have a default font if a translation other
than english is chosen. This font should also become available in the
homedir.

Seeing all new items that should reside in the home/start directory,
maybe now its the time to add a .blender directory that contains all
external data? It would be nice if the .B.blend and other files reside
in this directory too, so no system dirs get polluted with these files.

Let me know your opinions, thanks.

Rob