ANNOUNCE: xml-i18n-tools

[Kenneth Rohde Christiansen <kenneth gnu org>]

Hello fellow XML lovers and haters,

the XML internationalization team proudly presents the initial release
of the long awaited xml-i18n-tools package, codenamed "One bugreport
less in bugzilla".

The xml-i18n-tools module is based on code by Maciej, Darin and Kenneth.


* What is it?

The module contains some utility scripts and assorted auto* magic for 
internationalizing various kinds of XML files. This supersedes the
earlier scripts that I (Kenneth) distributed to be checked into each 
module. In addition, it has an additional merging feature, currently
only for oaf files. This feature might be extented to handle .desktop 
files and MIME files in the future.


* Features

o Automatically extracts translatable strings from oaf, glade, bonobo
   ui, nautilus theme and other XML files into the po files.

o Automatically merges translations from po files back into .oaf files
   (encoding to be 7-bit clean). I can also extend this merging
   mechanism to support other types of XML files.

Having the translations directly in the XML file is critical for some
file formats, and very helpful for others. When one package installs a
file and a program from another package might at some time read it,
you need to have the translations directly in the file, since the app
reading the data file will not know which message catalog to use.

The beauty of this extract and merge system is that it works through
the existing po mechanism, so translators will be able to work in
their normal way, and be notified of strings that change, or new
strings that are added, with existing tools.


* How to use

Please consult the README file in the xml-i18n-tools module for
information about how to add xml-i18n support to your module.


* Modules currently using xml-i18n-tools

Gnumeric, OAF, Ammonite, Nautilus, Galeon, possible others.

In order to build or translate these modules from cvs, you need to have 
xml-i18n-tools installed.

* Note for translators

The update.pl script is not used anymore by the modules depending on 
xml-i18n-tools. To update your translations, install xml-i18n-tools and
do "xml-i18n-update LANGCODE" in the po/ directory you want to update.

* Where to get?

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/xml-i18n-tools/xml-i18n-tools-0.5.tar.gz

RPMs are available from Eazel. Please look at:

http://developer.eazel.com/download/eazel-redhat7/hourly/current or
http://developer.eazel.com/download/hourly/current

* Where to report bugs?

http://bugzilla.eazel.com is the right place for this. 


Good luck,

The XML internationalization team
Maciej, Darin and Kenneth

Thanks to all who has helped finding bugs and varifying that they are
now gone!