On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:35:04 -0800 The Watermelon wrote: > On 3/24/07, *Per Inge Mathisen* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: >> The attached giant patch adds gettext support for Warzone, and the >> beginnings of a Norwegian translation. >> >> There are a number of caveats: It moves all strings defined in the C >> code back into the C files using gettext instead of using the strres >> system (thanks Huehner for writing the script that did this!). It does >> not change anything related to how strings defined in the data/ >> directory are handled, they still use the strres system. Warzone does >> not support non-English characters, and sometimes show (huge!) >> graphics in place of such characters instead, for some reason I do not >> yet understand. > I think wz uses a texture page for characters(hardware accelerated 2D > bmp)...probably the norweigian character has a weird index(out of a-z > and A-Z range) and used the wrong page/coords... >> Fixing the above issues will require more work. >> >> As regards translations, we need to come up with a conclusion as to >> what we want. I think we have the following options: >> * Use the existing system. It means we have to maintain all strings >> outside the C files where they are used, which is tiresome. >> * Use gettext. This means we get lots of tool support for free, since >> gettext is, AFAICT, what everyone else in the free software universe >> is using. Lots of translators are familiar with it. >> * Use only English. We can still move the strings into the C files to >> ease maintenance. >> >> You may guess which option I like best. But what I want to know is >> what the rest of you think. >> >> I would very much like to get a resolution on this pretty quick, >> because it sucks to maintain such a huge patch over time. > Maybe we should start a poll/thread in forum to recieve feedback from > users...coz at the end of day it's not us who are going to do > translations for all languages... Well, it won't be us who do _all_ translations. But considering that most of us know a language besides English (e.g. I'm Dutch, plus I could do a reasonable Latin translation :-P ) we should also keep that in mind.
Anyway, staying with English only really is no option in my opinion. Furthermore using the existing system (maintaining text strings outside of their code and as such outside of their context) seems to unmanageable to me. Then as for using gettext, I have looked into this before for some other (private among others) projects but never got around to using it, so I know some of its basics but no specific details. Anyway based on what I know about gettext; simply use a macro (that doesn't do anything) to mark translation strings. I think gettext is a suitable system, plus it seems to have a significant number of available tools for it. Then as for a poll on the forums, I think it would do well for the purpose of evaluating people's opinion. We should however use the results of such a poll as nothing more than information which we can take into account for a decision. I.e. we should _not_ consider the outcome of a poll to be final for a choice. Plus I think we should *not* use the three options shown indicated above by Per in such a poll. I think we should instead need a list of multiple translation methods/systems to choose from (gettext would be one of those, as could the existing system be, but English only equals no system so would belong to another poll, namely if people desire the possibility of translation or not). > Maintaining a huge patch does suck,it seems I could never resolve > conflicts with recent commits in my 2 huge patches without making wz > crash at startup... Keeping a set of smaller patches (i.e. a kind of patchset) for different parts of the code (and most importantly different functionality) is something that helps me in keeping them non-conflicting. Although I suppose something like a gettext patch wouldn't really become any easier that way. -- Giel
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