Windows Installer L10n - request for developer assistance

Dear AbiWord devs,

As noted in a previous message:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/2011/Dec/0012.html

The localization of the Windows installers via the NSH files in the
folder linked below, is in need of major improvement.

http://www.abisource.com/viewvc/abiword-msvc2008/trunk/Setup/NSISv2/lang/

I started by using English.nsh as a model

http://www.abisource.com/viewvc/abiword-msvc2008/trunk/Setup/NSISv2/lang/English.nsh?revision=29928&view=markup

And comparing/contrasting it to Russian.nsh and Basque.nsh as the most
recently localized examples, I attempted to create a POT file that
would capture the information that should be translated to localize
the installer and made this PO file available in the AbiWord project
on Pootle as:

Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

http://translate.sugarlabs.org/projects/AbiWord/

A number of our localizers have already completed the PO file for
their languages.  More are in the process of being translated.  Links
to download the currently completed PO files are below.

Chinese (China)
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/zh_CN/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

Czech
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/cs/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

Dutch
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/nl/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

Slovak
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/sk/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

Slovenian
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/sl/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

Welsh
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/export/AbiWord/cy/Windows_Installer_.nsh_strings.po

These PO files are currently encoded in UTF-8 and as Urmas observed of
the NSH files, "Apparently they can be either in usual Windows
encoding (CP125x) or UTF-16 (LE)."

I would like to collaborate with a developer on improving (or adding
to) the existing .nsh files in the mvsc branch so that the Windows
installation process has improved L10n.

A hacker-ish manual convert-encoding, copy, paste into the English.nsh
as a template seems like an adequate approach to what is hopefully a
one-time fix.  I would not object to collaborating on modifying the PO
file to be more suitable for an automated approach, but I think that
is not necessarily the quickest solution (i.e. in time for a
hypothetical 2.9.4 release), although it would probably be more
sustainable over the very long run.  I'd be more than satisfied just
to get the currently completed PO files manually converted to improved
NSH files and to document the necessary steps for future use.

Is there anyone even vaguely familiar with the Windows install process
that would be willing to work with me on this interim step of manually
creating new NSH files (Prashant, Simon, Ingo, Marc)?  We will also
want some testing during this process, for which I hope to engage a
few of our localizers or developers with a second language (and in
possession of a Windows environment).

Once the manual NSH creation process is worked out, I would document
it for the web-site.  Marc has given me access to make such changes.

cjl