Re: BoF item 12/14: improvements to gtranslator

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Gil Forcada <gforcada gnome org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As I said in previous mails, let this mail be a kickstart for giving
> feedback about the items that are defined on
> https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/Events/GTPBoFGUADEC2012
>
> In this mail please give feedback about the improvements on gtranslator
> item.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Gil Forcada



Quoting from:
https://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/Events/GTPBoFGUADEC2012#Improvements_to_gtranslator

Improvements to gtranslator

Background:

A brainstorming session was run over which improvements will be nice
to have on gtranslator. Right now gtranslator is short on developers,
so having a bullet point in this list does not mean it will be
implemented in short or at all if the situation does not change.

Bullet points:

    open to review patches

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I guess my question would be "Why?".  Have you taken a good look at
Virtaal and the Translate Toolkit?  I personally think they are the
best thing since sliced bread when it comes to off-line L10n work.

http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/virtaal/index
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/index

Instead of putting developer effort into gtranslate, put that effort
into converting Claude Paroz's Locale Helper web-app into a submission
workflow for glibc locales along the lines of CLDR's Survey Tool.

Or maybe work on enhancing the Translate Toolkit or Virtaal (if there
is something that you think they need).  Howwever; there is no need to
fall prey to the "not-invented-here" syndrome.  Perfectly good
solutions exist, under suitable licensing and with established
developer communities that it would be better to join rather than
re-code what they have already done.

Sure, the Translate Toolkit and Virtaal are not perfect.  No offense
intended to Friedel Wolff or the other superb translate.org devs but
as one example, I personally think POlogy does a better job of
producing differential PO files from two related input PO files (a
task I repeat occasionally), so the answer that makes sense to me is
to port the good things from other projects into TT and Virtaal to
make a really, really good product even better.  Reinventing the wheel
just seems like a waste of time.

Of course, I really like TT and Virtaal, maybe others have similarly
strong feelings about different tools like gtranslator or POedit. It
is never a waste of time defining important features and examining the
options to see what is best overall, but IMHO, I've settled on Virtaal
as the best-of-breed and would rather see work go into it than playing
catch up on gtranslator.  Choice is good, but I've made mine and I
would encourage others to try it before committing a lot of effort to
something else.

I have no intent to belittle the efforts of others, as I said, for
certain tasks I find that other tools work more intuitively or
efficiently, I just find that for me Virtaal has an overall advantage
as an off-line PO editor and that the TT allows me to do most of the
other manipulations of PO files I want to do.  YMMV.

cjl