Re: webmin translations status

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Hi All,

On Tuesday 11 October 2005 15:01, Wanderlei Antonio Cavassin wrote:
> Hi Jamie,
>
> Em Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 12:48:00PM +0000, Jamie Cameron escreveu:
> > Hi Guys,
> > I don't want to change the format of the Webmin translation files
> > unless there is some advantage of the po format over my current text
> > format. Switching to po would introduce a dependency on another
> > library, which I try to avoid whereever possible.
>
I'm not sure how the mandriva scripts work, but the Skolelinux ones don't=20
really add any extra dependencies:
=2D for a running webmin installation nothing changes, that still uses the=
=20
native webmin-format=20
=2D As for impact on webmin:
  -> you need 1 extra step, namely running the po->webmin conversion script=
  =20
  -> this has _no_ impact on runtime dependencies
  -> it need not even be done at build time, it's perfectly possible to this
       periodically with a cron-script (for the skolelinux webmin modules I
       run it manually every once in a while)

As for advantages:
=2D I don't think that there's anyone who disputes the fact that working=20
directly with the webmin translation format is an absolute pain from a=20
translator's perspective
=2D the po-format and corresponding tools are known to every translator I'm=
=20
aware off, and is pretty much universal in the Free software world
   -> this creates a very big pool of potential translators
   -> it turned out to be impossible for me to convince most of the
       skolelinux translators to learn to work with the webmin-native format
      and corresponding tools, they already new the po-format and there's
      lots of untranslated things around with po-files, so they simply
      ignored our webmin-modules and went to translate something else
      (the fact that the webmin format is such a pain to work with did not
      help at all)

yes there's webmin-trans which offers a nice interface but there's several=
=20
problems from a translator's perspective:
1) it's webbased, thus you can only work on translations while online (I=20
know that most of the translations I do, are done when I'm traveling by=20
train, hence am offline)
2) it forces them to learn yet another tool, and workflow that's different=
=20
from the way they translate every other free sofware (there's very few=20
translators who only translate for a single piece of software, and they=20
tend to appreciate the fact that they can use the same tools for all=20
projects)
3) I'm not familiar enough with webmin-trans to be able to compare it's=20
features with those of the major po-translation tools (gettexttools, emacs=
=20
po-mode, kbabel, gtranslator, poedit, ...) but given the relative age (and=
=20
number of users) I suspect that at least some of the po-tools are a more=20
feature-rich

> The main question is if we should add these PO files in the webmin
> translation project itself.

this would be a good thing IMO

To summarize:
The impact on the webmin-team for adding po-files seems minimal, and the=20
resulting increase in the potential translators alone seams enough (at=20
least to me) to justify this.
=2D-=20
cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis):
    Co=F6rdinator Belgisch Skolelinux team
    Co=F6rdinator Nederlandse Skolelinux vertaling

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