Hi Michael, all in all, I think this sounds nice!
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 01:22:16PM +0200, Michael Bramer wrote: > 1.) use all the time _gettext_! I agree, otherwise we'd just have to keep re-inventing the wheel. > 2.) get the .po/.mo files on the system [snip] > If we don't like this process on the client all the time, we can > produce Descriptions-XX.po files and the clinet must only > download this file and save this in the right dir. But this file > will include the orignal description and with this it has the > double size and download time. I don't know enough about gettext - am I assuming correctly that in the .mo file, the English translation is replaced with a checksum or similar, so you do not need to store the complete English translation? > 4.) How get katie (or the desc-trans-XX.deb) the translation? [snip] > 5.) translated descriptions in the package. [snip] > I see only one problem: the size. > > We have now 80446 .deb packages and 7643 source packages in the > debian archiv on ftp-master. If we include the translation in the > deb, we must store this in the source and in every deb package. > > check this calculation: > If in all sources are only one desription with 130 (geziped) > bytes of description we get 1 MByte per languages. If we use po > files in the source (see below), we get 2 MBytes per languages > And all deb packages have only one description with 130 (geziped) > bytes. This make 10 MByte per languages. If we store the > description as po file, we will use 20 MByte per languges. > 11/22 MByte per languages, with only 10 languages we will get > 110/220 MBytes. Hm, this sounds a lot, but note that relative to the complete archive size, it's only an increase of about 1%. A well-invested way of using this disc space, IMHO. > With more Packages, ports, languages, this will grow. This bytes > must all be downloaded, uploaded and synced with the time. > > And on the local system the descriptions and the translations of > all languages from the package will stored on the local harddisk > (without gzip). Count: > With 10 languages, 1000 installed Packages and 380 Bytes per > description and per translation you get additional 4/8MBytes on > the local disk. > > Is this all usefull in a 'normal' deb package from the debian > project? Maybe yes. We must decide this. (I personal don't find the > real pro about this. But we can add it and I don't have a real > problem with this. I see only the size problem, and this is not a > big problem.) I think it's very important to have the translations in the *source* package. For the binary package, I don't know... - Gnome and KDE do include all translations, and I think it's easier to handle. Additionally, disc space is really cheap these days, so maybe it would be better just to include all the descriptions, too. > In all the cases I propose: store the description in the source as > .po file in the /debian/ dir (one per languages). This is the > only real good way to store the translations. (no encodeing > problem, no outdated text, no debconf-mergetemplate hack, ...) Seconded. > But how get the maintainer the translation? We have some cases: > - The maintainer translate the description hisself > - He find some own translator (like now with debconf) > - He use the ddtp > - He can ask the ddts and get all translations of the package > - He can use the override file of katie > - He use the notification mails from the ddts (In future the > server will use the decided format in this mail. With this, > the maintaner must only copy this file in the source.) > > Now the technique part: > > The proposal with the biggest patch, is the 'put the translation in > a own element in the deb ar'. Maybe this is nice and feasible. > But this is not a fast way. > > Because of this I propose some solutions: > > 1.) (very fast) > > put the translation as normal .po file in the > /usr/share/desc-trans/<locale>/desc-trans.d/ dir. finish. > > This don't need some extra work on dpkg etc. Actually, I think this is completely sufficient. Let the maintainer include updated translations at his convenience in new uploads, and use the override mechanism for the Descriptions-XX.mo.gz files until he has done so. Hm, but note that this means that dpkg will need to look first at Descriptions-XX.mo files downloaded by apt, and only then at the .po file in the package. Would that be a problem? > 2.) Put the translation in the control.tar.gz of the deb. [snip] > 3.) Add the desc-trans.tar.gz in the deb ar as a own new element. [snip] Cheers, Richard -- __ _ |_) /| Richard Atterer | CS student at the Technische | GnuPG key: | \/¯| http://atterer.net | Universität München, Germany | 0x888354F7 ¯ ´` ¯