Re: Feature-request: locked scrolling based on paragraph breaks

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 30 January 2012 02:36, Olivier <O Zucker web de> wrote:
> Hello meld-list readers,
>
> since my feature-request I've researched this a bit more. One related term
> is XLIFF, a XML based format that allows bits of "meaning" in different
> languages to exist interwoven in one file. XLIFF editors allow the
> navigation of this format, but most of them are focused on translating
> "units" of a few words only, like for UI projects. Only some tackle
> multi-line text, which is common in law, scientific or political areas but
> not so much common in .po gettext() / maketext() areas. Side-by-side editors
> seem to be a rare beast.
>
> The sexyness of doing translations with meld would come from the fact, that
> meld would then allow the translator to have texts in different languages in
> separate documents in plain text! No mark-up needed, no paragraph ids, no
> vertical interweaving (all of this is what XLIFF, TMX, etc. do). meld would
> counter this with simple paragraph break interlocking.
>
> @Kai and every interested developer
> If it is really not that much work to add this feature to meld - please make
> it happen. Let's add meld to this list:
> http://www.linuxfortranslators.org/align.html

It's actually not that easy. Assumptions about how we use the results
of diff algorithms and such are built fairly deeply into Meld. These
are actually quite easy to change. However, as far as I can see, it
would be *very* difficult to make Meld work for both the usual use
case and for this paragraph-aligned use.

As I suggested before, I think that it would be entirely possible to
pull code out of Meld and produce a tool that does this
paragraph-aligned editing. A dedicated tool would be easier to
maintain, would do the job better and would have a far superior UI.

Again, if people decide to go ahead with this, I'm more than happy to
help with pulling out useful bits of Meld and pointing out cruft that
can be dropped. However, I don't think it's feasible, or a good idea,
to integrate this feature in Meld itself.

cheers,
Kai