Re: xml2po

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Hi Matthew,

Today at 13:47, Matthew East wrote:

> Thanks very much indeed for your reply, which I won't pretend to
> understand completely, but I hope we can resolve this issue! As a
> starting point, do you think that if the english document was merged
> into a single file, and validated with xmllint, the problems would be
> resolved?

Simpler is this (I mention "xml2po -e" towards the end of my last
email, sorry if I have been too confusing):

  xml2po -e -o faqguide.pot .../path/to/faqguide.xml

for getting a POT file, and

  xml2po -e -o faqguide.XX.xml -p XX.po .../path/to/faqguide.xml

for merging back a translation in XX.po.

(provided you have all the .ent definitions available; I got bored
after getting ../../../libs/common.ent, ../../../gnome/libs/*.ent, ...
xmllint will let you know if you are missing anything).  Of course,
there are additional guidelines which would belong in the category
"writing DocBook for translation" (since DocBook is too powerful and
scalable for its own good), such as putting <programlisting>s,
<screen>s, <itemizedlist>s, <figure>s, outside <para>s whenever
possible so you avoid unneeded <placeholder>s, even if you lose some
of the original semantics.

>> I can also suggest that you make use of gnome-doc-utils build system,
>> and migrating is described at:
>> 
>>   http://live.gnome.org/GnomeDocUtilsMigrationHowTo
>
> I will investigate this further and talk with the ubuntu-doc team.

Great, it should ease the work for you significantly independently of 
the translation work, since it's an excellent build system for docs
which also integrates xml2po, figure handling, etc. :)

Cheers,
Danilo