I am talking here strictly from a translator point of you.
For those who have forgotten it, SUN has a wonderful localization tool
that is (partly) open sourced and thus fully available to l10n
communities.
The tool set is called "Open Language Tools", it is hosted here:
https://open-language-tools.dev.java.net/
Long term l10n contributors may recall that before OLT was open
sourced, OOo translators were provided with the closed version: Sun
Translation Editor (STE). I don't remember which file format we were
provided with though.
The tool set comes in three parts. From the current manual:
Using the system involves the use of two or three tools, the Open
Language XLIFF Filters, an optional translation memory server-side
tool (TM tool) and the Open Language Tools XLIFF Translation Editor.
The server side tool is not yet available as part of the Open
Language Tools project, but hopefully will be added in the future.
It appears that the server side tool will probably not be open sourced
in the end (see OLT's dev list archives), but it still exists and has
been used in the past since SUN was probably using this system to
localize at least StarOffice and maybe other software suites. This is
professional class software. SUN was providing its translation
_vendors_ with pre-processed TMs and XLIFF source files, and I suppose
a copy of STE etc. The TMX format was already supported too...
What is the current status of OLT from the OOo l10n point of view ?
There is a major problem: the OLT filters do not support the format
SUN currently provides the OOo l10n community with : the SDF format...
To have the SDF files handled in OLT it is necessary to first convert
them to a supported format, PO for example.
And it has been demonstrated earlier that the conversion of SDF to PO
using the current solution (oo2po) is far from optimal and actually is
counter productive when translators what to use the TMX SUN is
providing the community with.
So, basically, we come from a situation where SUN was handling the
l10n process of StarOffice in a professional way with extremely
efficient tools: TM pre-processing server and XLIFF editor in a time
where XLIFF was starting to be adopted by the various players of the
(professional) localization world, to today, where SUN provides the
OOo l10n community with intermediate file formats that are not
supported by common tools (even theirs), eventually some TMX files and
"file filters" from a third party that converts the SDF sets to a less
useable PO file set.
Pavel writes:
"It is because SDF is very flexible and easy to use and convert to
whatever you need/want! But it is not SDF in particular that is so
good. It is the concept of "easy transformation to everything" that is
so successful. And SDF represents it right now"
Where is the commonly available tool chain that handles this obscure
SDF format ?
Meanwhile, it was already stated on this list that the localizable
files exist, in XML.
Now, what is the most common on the tool chain market nowadays ? A
transformation set for XML files ? Or a transformation set for SDF
files ?
If we had XLIFF from SUN, we could have PO for people who want PO.
Check this page:
http://xliff-tools.freedesktop.org/wiki/
Also:
OLT can convert any XML to XLIFF.
Okapi (for Mono) can do it too !
If SUN was able to extract XML data before for its translation
vendors, why isn't it able to do that now ?
Why can't we have proper file formats when all the supporting tools
are right there ?
Which are the communities that would _not_ benefit from productivity
gains offered by using proper TMX and XML/XLIFF source files ?
----------------------
Jean-Christophe Helary
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com/
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