Re: Project Start

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 09:16:10PM -0400 or thereabouts, James R. Johnson wrote:
> Alrighty,
>     So, at the outset, what should a team for OE do to begin translating?  I
> read the FAQ and User Guide, but then also the Glossaries, but what about
> the program files themselves?  What order would one recommend?

There is a guide to (parts of :)) getting started which Daf and I
put together. Which we probably need to update. But we did discuss
this a little in that. 

It's in gnome-i18n/l10n-guide/C/l10n-guide.xml

Snip:

<para>
Here are some factors which may help you decide what to translate first.
</para>
 
<para>
It is probably best to pick something very small the first time, in order to
get used to the translation tools you are using. It is also useful to pick
something which is an application rather than a library. This way, you will be
able to run the application and see what it looks like. So a small stand-alone
application is a good choice.
</para>
                                                                                
<para>
Unless you are running GNOME built from CVS on your machine, you are likely to
have the most recent stable release on it. Therefore, it is a good idea to
translate the appropriate version of the application. So if you have
<application>bug-buddy-2.4</application> on your machine, use the 2.4 branch
of the <application>bug-buddy</application> module in CVS. If you use a
different version, some of the strings will have changed, and when you test
it, you won't see all of your translations.
</para>
                                                                                
<para>
As soon as you test your application in its new language, you will almost
certainly notice that common buttons and dialogue buttons are still in
English. This is because they come from some of the libraries and are reused
all over GNOME. To get those into your language, you will need to look at
<application>gtk+</application>, <application>libgnome</application> and
particularly <application>libgnomeui</application>. These files contain some
very difficult strings, but you do not need to do them all yet. Just look for
the strings which consistently show up in dialogue boxes. This will help
immensely.
</para>


I would not bother translating the docs until after you have
translated the programs. The docs have lots of "press the button
marked Foo" parts, so you need to have decided what Foo is going
to be.

So I'd go for something like bug-buddy, gcalctool or gnome-utils as
small stand-alone applications to get the hang of the tools. 

And then libgnomeui, which contains all the stuff for toolbars and
menus and buttons (Edit, View, New, Open a file, Save as..)

Once you have those submitted, you will find a webpage generated as
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.8/ang/index.html (assuming ang
is your code. You can substitute cy or en_GB or da for that to get
a look at what they look like and what info they contain).

And then use that and decide your own priorities. :) Are you
going for -all- of developer-libs and desktop? (That's what the
stats for "supported, partially supported" count up.) Are you
going for Stuff You Like? And so on. 

Modules we found hard: gtk (it contained what is now gtk and
gtk-properties, and a lot of technical strings); gok (more
terminology we didn't know and very short strings); and gucharmap 
(utf-8 terminology: planes and canonical decomposition and radical 
supplements... fortunately, the maintainer was very very helpful 
explaining what all this was about!)

Hope this helps.

Telsa