Re: GNU gettext for hildon?

[Tommi Komulainen <tommi komulainen nokia com>]

On Fri, 2008-02-22 at 11:59 -0500, ext Kyle Nitzsche wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It appears that Hildon does not use standard GNU gettext.
> 
> The strings in code that are destined for exposure in the user  
> interface are not meaningful English, which I believe they should be  
> in order to facilitate/enable translation.

The issue with localisation is well known and discussed in depth last
year. Please see the full thread on maemo-developers:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail//maemo-developers/2007-October/012056.html

In short: Nokia needs to figure out in excruciating detail how it needs
to change processes to be able to use gettext normally.


> One implication of this is that Hildon cannot be readily translated in  
> systems where the strings in code are displayed as the basis for  
> translations, like launchpad.net.

As we do make en_GB translations available, launchpad (or rosetta) could
theoretically make use of that as the basis instead. IIRC Adilson in
principal agreed.

I know that's not helping much :-/


> 1) Should Hildon be modified to implement GNU gettext i81n?

Yes. This would be trivial, but...


> 2) Is the only change required fixing the strings to be meaningful  
> English or are there other non-standard aspects?

...we also need to change our processes to match. This is non-trivial.


> 3) Should Hildon packages be set up for intltool as a further step  
> towards standardized i18n?

intltool is required only if you have other than C files to translate
(.desktop, .schemas, .xml, etc - see intltool-update) -- if you don't, I
don't know it makes much difference.


-- 
Tommi Komulainen                            <tommi komulainen nokia com>