Hi,
After all the exchanges about Pootle the list, I would like to clarify
what is the philosophy of the project.
Pootle is a file server for localisable material (in PO or XLIFF
formats). It includes an online editor, but we believe that most people
will prefer to continue working off-line with their favourite off-line
translation editors.
We are developing our own off-line translation editor for XLIFF files.
This translation editor will be closely tied to Pootle, exchanging data
through an XLM-RPC interface or something similar, or just using PO or
XLIFF files that have been downloaded.
The main goal of the WordForge project is to integrate advanced
localisation technology in a way that is usefull to open source
localisation. This includes of course translation memories and
glosaries, testing the quality of the files... but it goes much further,
or final goal is to encode the localisation process that the files
follow, in order to reduce the amount of work for all participants in
the localisation effort, and to improve the quality of the translation
that are done by not-so-skilled translators.
We believe that the future of open source localisation is not PO files,
but XLIFF files. XLIFF files permit encoding of process, and many other
bits of information that are useful for the translator. In the future, a
file donwloaded from Pootle will embbed translation memory suggestions
and the glossary bits that corresponds to the source texts in that file.
The translator will manage one single file, but it will have all the
help that we can give to him/her, including testing for variables,
correct spacing, capitalisation (for those languages that have such a
thing), punctuation... all the things that we are able to test now
through the translate toolkit.
We also believe that we cannot force the change to XLIFF, but that it
will be the users who in the future will undertand the advantages, once
the tools are available and we can really show the advantages... we will
nevetheless work with both formats.
Meanwhile, our goal at the end of this year is to have a file repository
that works correctly, and which can handle both PO and XLIFF files
correctly. Once we have this strong base, we will start adding features
during 2007. On the next versions of the applications, the files will be
stored inside Pootle only in XLIFF format, but if a user wishes to use
PO, they will converted on the fly for download. It will be possible to
upload either PO or XLIFF files, and the new contents will be integrated
with the old one, independently of the upload format.
We are listening carefully for user demands. All the list of things that
we see here as missing in Pootle (or on the WordForge off-line editor)
become part of our TODO list if they are not yet implemented.
We have a server running the latest stable version of Pootle running in
in http://pootle.wordforge.org. For the moment, and until we have all
the OOo localisation processes under good control (including upgrading,
construction of GSI files, etc.), we prefer that OOo projects run under
our control in this server (a dedicated 64-bit doble processor machine),
but later, we would be happy to see a dedicated OpenOffice Pootle
machine, either under the WordForge.org domain or the OpenOffice.org
domain. Charles is attempting to have his server at Arsaperta under an
OpenOffice domain, in which case (ands after we stop all the testing),
we woul be happy to pass all the OpenOffice projects there (if the
machine is strong enough to handle them) and to help Charles and Aiet
(who is administering the server) on installation and maintenance.
OpenOffice.org is a key project for WordForge, and we are prepared to
put many resources into it.
Javier
(co-director of the WordForge project)
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