Re: [qa-dev] switching to XLIFF

[Clytie Siddall]

Actually, this should be on l10n-dev. I think I sent it to the wrong list initially. Sorry. (I'm not quite sure how that happened... :S )

On 09/08/2007, at 10:32 PM, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

On 9 août 07, at 21:22, Vito Smolej wrote:

Back-Conversion to PO!?

SUN: XML<->SDF<->PO<->XLIFF :Translators
SUN: XML<->SDF<->TMX :Translators



Even if PO were not used we'd still have:

XML<->SDF<->XLIFF
XML<->SDF<->TMX



I have no idea why SUN can't do:

XML<->XLIFF(<->PO)
XML<->TMX

The PO->XLIFF and SDF->TMX conversions do not encapsulate any code contents so we have all the code as translatable... Which is just as bad for the same reason: SDF removes all XML benefit from the file since it flattens everything (with plenty of ugly escapes) to text. And the current converters don't seem to be smart enough to encapsulate all that anyway.

I did not know about that ... You're of course absolutely right about losing everything.

I tried the last OOo 2.3 translation files with PO first and gave up. Then I hacked the SDF to have something that looked like the original XML and used OmegaT to translate. The results were very satisfying, but the hack was a pain in the butt (it is documented on the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list).

If OpenOffice.org adopted OpenDocument, it certainly should adopt XLIFF.

So, where do we start? :)


http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN

[A]













http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN

My initial email [A] was to request that OpenOffice.org convert entirely to XLIFF. The SDF format is extremely cumbersome, and I've yet to see any translation benefit in it whatsoever. PO is a useful translation format, but XLIFF is far superior. So I'm not talking about converting between SDF, PO and XLIFF, or between any combination of the three. I'm talking about using XLIFF as the base translation format for OpenOffice.org. Translators can choose to convert back to PO if they like, since we already have the conversion tools, but those of us using the XLIFF format will have its major advantages: an XML standard designed for i18n. Its metadata capacities and sheer manipulability are way ahead of PO format. (Since SDF format has neither metadata capacity or any appreciable level of manipulability, I can't compare it.) from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do) XLIFF is the standard [1] for professional translation, and is becoming the standard for free-software translation. It is XML for translators: extremely easy to manipulate, and rich with metadata capabilities which save us a lot of time. Compared even to PO format, XLIFF has serious advantages. It is exactly what we need to manage the complex background of an OpenOffice.org translation file. It also handles document translation extremely well, and enhances TM capability. There are a number of free-software translation tools already available for XLIFF [2], and Pootle is based on XLIFF. My offline editor, LocFactoryEditor, is also based on XLIFF: I expect Pootling, the Wordforge offline editor, is as well. There are a great many advantages to switching to XLIFF. When can we start? :) from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do) [1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xliff/documents/xliff- specification.htm

[2] e.g.
http://xliff-tools.freedesktop.org/wiki/Projects/xlifftool
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xliffroundtrip

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