As a GNOME translator, I can say translating documentation with PO files is _much_ better than editing XML files.
I agree PO files are much more handy when translating user interface, but editing XML files isn't any better. The translation tools (or vim/emacs/etc. po-mode) allow us to focus on the actual text, not on the document structure. I never ran into a GNOME document which paragraphs I needed to merge of split. Sometimes I think I would have structured the text differently, but that's not locale-specific. I never translated GnuCash documentation, but from what I read I believe I wouldn't have any problem using gnome-doc-utils with it. One advantage of gettext translation is that, if I translate the hole document and a documenter changes a paragraph, the rest of the document is still translated and only that paragraph will be shown in English. The lack of this features makes translators avoid translating man pages, for instance. I agree sometimes it's hard to spot where the message was changed, specially if it's a long paragraph. There ways to circunvent this, however: 1. You may run wdiff (http://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/) between previous and current original message, and add the output to the comments. 2. You could adopt gettext 0.16 and use the --previous function in msgmerge I never saw a project using any of these, and I don't know if they are easy to implement. Between gnome-doc-utils without the tricks above and plain XML editing, I prefer the former. Maybe that's all because I'm used to gnome-doc-utils, but honestly I'll try to use xml2po (from gnome-doc-utils) even if I'll have to build XML latter to commit it. Leonardo Fontenelle http://leonardof.org/2007/07/01/gnome-user-guide-completely-translated-to-brazilian-portuguese/en/ 2007/7/5, Pierre-Antoine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Christian Stimming a écrit : > > Am Donnerstag, 5. Juli 2007 16:16 schrieb Josh Sled: > > > >> Pierre-Antoine Lacaze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> > >>> I'm beginning the French translation of Gnucash's help, and have been > >>> suggested that it would be a good move to look into converting > >>> gnucash-help to gnome-doc-utils [1]. g-d-u is supposedly the preferred > >>> way for documentation handling, and make use of po files. > >>> > > > > Without having looked too much into g-d-u details I'd *strongly* adverse > > moving our user documentation to po files! Po files are great for smaller > > chunks of translations which can be translated more or less independent from > > one another. Our documentation, with the "Guide and Concepts" being the best > > part of it all, is clearly not at all translatable in a > > paragraph-by-paragraph way, independently of one another. > > > > Also, one of the largest advantages of po files, which is the easy > > visualization of changed strings, becomes moot if these strings are longer > > than 1-2 lines. For longer strings, po only says "this whole paragraph has > > changed in *some* way", whereas .xml or .sgml or even .txt would give you a > > diff showing the exact line that changed. (Diffs are not possible for po.) > > > > IMHO the arbitrary division of the help documents into separate po strings > > doesn't offer any advantage at all. I don't agree with this being "a > > preferred way". Well, maybe for a subset of user documentation: This *might* > > be suitable to the kind of help you'd expect when pressing F1 somewhere, > > which gives you 2-3 sentences about what is currently going on. But this is > > not at all suitable for our large Guide document. > > > > > >>> I more or less ported it already, and would like to know if there is a > >>> compelling reason not to move over. > >>> > >>> I fear myself with po files the lack of flexibility required in highly > >>> technical, country-specific documentation. > >>> > > > > If you still think this might be interesting, then I'd be interested to see > > the .pot file that comes out of the g-d-u conversion (or part of it). I > > would > > clearly recommend against it, though. > > > > Regards, > > > > Christian > > > > I suspected so, and pot files indeed look scary and unusable. > > Does someone know a good way of handling big doc translation in a > collaborative fashion, without resorting to hard to use tools ? I know > of a wiki engine capable of editing docbooks, or exporting to docbooks. > > -- Pierre-Antoine > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > gnucash-devel@gnucash.org > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel > _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
