Re: open translations database

["Kenneth Christiansen" <kenneth gnu org>]

> > This is one of the toughest things to deal with, and a very importain
> > one. What I do is to try to keep Gnome 100% at all times, but that is
> > impossible,
> 
> ... and not needed at all ;)

Wrong, I think. We want to be used in schools, universities, etc. I have
talked with many people about, teachers, etc. and In order for them to do
so, they need "Microsoft quality", which means 100% well translated 
programs! This *IS* importain!

> > and sometimes maintainers release a package, which might not be well
> > translated. This is extremely bad, since sometimes, there will go
> > uptil a half year before a new release is made, and who say people
> > download this.
> 
> Please, don't blame "them".  Some maintainers will happily release a
> package if you tell them that's useful because of more added
> translations.  And we agreed to take special care to make this happen
> after 1.4.

I know a lot do a good job, but still the process can be better. Often
I have experienced that people *didn't* want to put out a new release
because of new translations. Sorry, but that is the sad truth. Also, 
especially distributions (I do not know about suse) don't like updating
packages for this. Their process is not made for that

> We've just to make sure proper branches are created and such...
> 
> > The main problem with this today is:
> > 
> > - lack of translators
> 
> It depends...
;) Good translators. The Danish team might be a little rought, but we 
only want people who profit the project. Often, we try to learn people
not to translate, etc, we read through their translations, comment, etc
All a lot of work, but in the end it really profits the project.
Quality here in the keyword. We aim at better that Microsoft Quality

> > - other translation formats, like .desktop .keys etc files, that 
> >   is in no status table, and that translators generally do not know 
> >   about
> 
> This is to be solved as described some month ago:
Yes, I remember that thread, and I will impliment in with Gnome real
soon now! But first I need to discuss the implimentation with some of
my fellow hackers ;)

>     - Original (english) strings have to be in *.desktop.in files.
I will discuss now to define this format. Maybe even replace this
.desktop format

>     - `xgettext' has to learn to extract the strings from *.in files and
>       write the usual .pot files.
should it be a new pot file? or should this be done differently
 
>     - Translators have to translate the .po files as usual.
> 
>     - Write a tool (Perl/Python) to merge entries from differend .po
>       files into the final .desktop file.
No problem, but the analysis is the importain thing now. We want to make
it work first time

> And Aoife should learn to quote, please ;)
;)

Kenneth