On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 12:23:57PM +0200, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> On Fri, 12 May 2006, Marco Ciampa wrote:
> >On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 11:23:23AM +0200, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> >>On Fri, 12 May 2006, Marco Ciampa wrote:
> >>>On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 03:33:02PM +0200, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> >>>>I think the po2xml is just used to translate the program strings which
> >>>>appear in the docs (used to refer to button captions etc), not for the
> >>>>actual
> >>>>documentation text.
> >>>Wrong. It is used for documentation writing too as you can see here,
> >>>for the LinuxFromScratch manual:
> >>>
> >>>http://www.mail-archive.com/lfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org/msg06863.html
> >>
> >>In that case, I understand even less why they use it. In my opinion,
> >>the .po format is totally unsuitable for this kind of thing.
> >Sorry, I do not understand and I really want to see your point.
> >Could you please tell me why you consider .po files not suitable for the
> >job?
> >I do not know of some other tool able to manage the update problem of a
> >multilingual translation as the gettext tool. May be I'm wrong but I
> >think that such a tool simply does not exist!
>
> po files are designed/meant for captions, short one-line descriptions to be
> displayed in a program, produced by gettext from sources.
Right. It is the kind of use I intended for gettext. We both agree about
po files scope but I think you missed the point.
> Gettext uses a very inefficient algorithm for translation: it searches
> in the .po (or .mo) file for the original text, and then returns the
> translated text. You can't get more inefficient than that.
No. It is really quick and it doesn't search the .po file but its
compiled form, the .mo and anyway, I never intended to use it as a final
product, so I do not really care if it's fast or not.
> Conclusion:
> The .po format is not designed/meant for large pieces of continuous text.
Yes, I agree again and the use I have in mind
([EMAIL PROTECTED] in this ml grasped the concept quickly, see:
----
> Maybe a "source format" file combination of "*.po" files and a XML
> file:
>
> --------
> <xml>
> <title path= "title.po" />
>
> <contents path= "contents.po" />
>
> </xml>
> --------
yes, sort of...
----
) is to use the interesting propriety of the .po files with the gettext
utility suite only for source code, not for the final result.
Infact I never inteded it to.
A paragraph is always a short text, in general a fiew lines, so it's
ideal for gettext & .po strings.
> I agree with you that a good tool for translations does not exist.
> The question is whether such a tool should exist.
The right tool do not exist but gettext is the most andvanced tool in
this direction thought.
> A simple diff
> (with nice gui) in any text editor can help you in keeping your
> translation up to date just as much...
No, really not, it's a nightmare, believe me!
My main occupation (as a volunteer) is to translate free software
programs and manuals (like GIMP) and I can assure you: without gettext
revision control it's really difficult to keep track of the
modifications inserted at random (in time and location) by contributors
even using a language (the english) as a reference and with cvs (and
cvs web interface).
> There is no need to use a .po file format for this.
For the final product, no. I really intended to obtain html _AND_ any
other suitable for browse/search format like chm or pdf or info or
whatever you like.
> How would you translate a document written in Latex, or Ms-Word or
> OpenOffice Writer?
Cut it in paragraps and paste it in many .po strings and the work
is easier than that with any other source format.
> There are no good tools for this, and I don't
> believe it's possible to write such a tool other than some visual
> aid for detecting differences...
Have you used tools like intltool-update from the gnome project lately?
It works like a sharm! Is it possible to obtain the same result with any
other tool? Do you know of any similar tools? Without gettext utilities
like msgmerge?
> For example:
> The fpdoc format is much more suitable for translation, because all
> pieces of text are identified with unique names.
The text is really a unique identifier, or not?
> It would be much more easy to write a translator program for that.
Yes its simple in a one-shot effort. Pray to be not the manual
mantainer...and why should you reinvent the wheel when there are so many
instruments like poedit, kbabel, emacs po-mode, even rosetta web
interface from the ubuntu project!?!
Remember: the problem is _not_ the easyness to translate the manual
_but_ the maintainability of it!
--
Marco Ciampa
+--------------------+
| Linux User #78271 |
| FSFE fellow #364 |
+--------------------+
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