Re: About translating documents (.xml/.sgml) in GNOME

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 10:03:04AM +0000, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:51:20PM -0700 or thereabouts, Paisa Seeluangsawat wrote:
> > 
> > I agree with Malcolm.  The biggest hassle is tracking changes in the
> > master doc.  Two approaches that might help are,
> > 
> >   - Have a smart diff tool that can pinpoint a small change in a
> >     source paragraph.
> 
> I haven't used it, but might wdiff fit the bill for this part?
> It's aimed more at comparing words, regardless of where the new
> lines start, than at comparing lines. 

It can sort of be done with wdiff, although some squinting is then
required to see how that applies to the translation.

For those with Java installed, Norm Walsh has a tool for marking up
changes between Docbook documents. After typesetting them with the
"changebars.xsl" stylesheet, you can get a garishly coloured final
document showing what has changed. It is not too much extra work to use
a different stylesheet to extract the changes for other usage.

However, this has wandered a bit from the idea of making it not only
easy to attract changes, but also familiar for translators to work with.
I think the latter point must be at least partially valid, since it was
also the driving point behind intltool and, as a result, we have all
sorts of user-visible strings now being translated without a second
thought. It is this portion that I was requesting feedback on from the
various translation experts.

Malcolm

-- 
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.