Internationalization / translation

larsivi

Once on the NG, we discussed translation issues, epecially gettext (used by KDE) and the stuff in Qt.
Anyway, I don't know whether you've started on this, or is planning it at all, but there exist a XML standard for translation files called XLIFF (search for XLIFF on Google, it is a OASIS standard, but many pages of interest exist).

If I were to suggest anything, it is that if/when you/someone decide to implement support for such things in Indigo, then it should use XLIFF. Hmm, maybe it should be a library of it's own, it being a standard and all?

Well, that's a couple of cents up there.

uwe · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 34 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Translation is already implemented and works like a charm. It uses the Qt format (TS) for the translation files, and that was mostly chosen because of its simplicity. I also considered using the PO format like gettext, but discarded it because of some features i did not want to implement; XLIFF was totally unknown to me.

I will consider adding XLIFF support, but this will definitely take some time, as i am currently working on localization (number formatting, etc.) which is helluva complex theme on its own, and Stewart is working on Codecs and TextStream which proved to be much more complicated to implement than i thought.

The most important question is: are there tools for working with XLIFF? The TS format is of course editable with the Qt Linguist, or with KBabel, and i guess there could be some other editors, too. Does XLIFF provide something like that?

Anyways, the XML format is only used for the translation process. After translation a binary file is created out of it that is easy and fast to load for Indigo (otherwise it would need an XML parser just for translation).

Thanks for the idea! Ciao
uwe

larsivi · Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 11:49 am Post subject:

uwe · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 34 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

A quick look at the KBabel homepage shows that they already added XLIFF support in version 1.10!

I do not know what you mean with "context handling", but the current system in Indigo definitely has a bad plural handling - there is no such facility. Adding it would have required to add a simple C expression parser (to parse the plural selection expression in the PO file), and that was something i definitely do not want to add currently. Does XLIFF provide sophisticated plural support (as GNU gettext does)?

Perhaps plural support will be added in a later version. Currently this would be just overkill, as i don't know who is even using the translation module yet. My impression is that everybody is coding some more or less quick'n'dirty apps that only speak english; and they are mostly D code editors. Then again, i did not search through all dsource projects intensively.

By the way, which project are you working on currently?

Ciao
uwe

larsivi · Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 12:32 pm Post subject:

uwe · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 34 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Somehow i think that you can trust your experience... Very Happy

Ciao
uwe

uwe · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 34 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

By the way, what does "TBA" mean?

Thai Bankers Association?
Tennessee Brokerage Agency?
Thyroxine Binding Albumine?
Trenes de Buenos Aires?
Technisch Bureau Andriessen?
Thuis Begeleiding Autisme???

:)

larsivi · Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject:

uwe · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 34 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

A little update on i18n: I am currently working on other localization issues, and message formatting is already finished for strings and integers. That means you can output things like "Copying text.txt - file 3 of 8." in a completely localized manner. Look at the indigo.i18n.format module to read more. The above example would be coded like this:

larsivi · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:16 am Post subject: Re: Message formatting