Hello everyone,
I've been working on the translations and have:
- Converted many translations to po files using 'po4a'
- Converted both current and outdated files (synced with the
translated EN revision)
- Created and tested scripts that automate most of this one time
conversion
- Setup Pootle on the doc server, sort of
Things not yet done:
- Much testing
- Full knowledge of how all this will work
- A fully working Pootle (a bug exists)
- A fully working toolchain
- :)
Problems that will happen:
- We will lose some translated text, although typically because
it's old or incorrectly formatted
- Our current translation related tools may or may not remain useful
- Performance loss: PO->DocBook at build time (cache?)
- We lose translation history (although archives/attic exists)
- Learning required
Things you should know:
- EN remains in DocBook, but translations are stored in PO files
- Tools (po4a) convert PO back to DocBook (after comparing to EN)
for use with the build system (phd)
- All translated text will be considered 'fuzzy' initially, so will
need human verification
- This move must be completed before php.net moves to another VCS
(this year)
- See also: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/developers/screencasts
A proposed structure:
EN:
- Remains as it is today
- Ex: phpdoc/en/reference/strings/functions/strlen.xml
- Can be edited online or offline
Translations:
- Moves from DocBook to PO files
- Ex: phpdoc-po/ja/reference/strings/functions/strlen.po
- Can be edited online or offline
You'll notice a proposed new CVS module named phpdoc-po that contains
every translation. This seems like the simplest and most straight
forward approach to me, and today it still allows translators to
checkout a single language:
$ cvs co phpdoc-po/ja
So, the current TODO for this:
- Upload PO files to doc server for testing with Pootle (Philip)
- Get Pootle working (Michael)
- Let everyone know when we're ready for testing (Philip)
- Decide if we want to simply start using svn.php.net and skip CVS
for po files
- After successful testing, freeze phpdoc-all
- Convert phpdoc-all to PO files, commit
- Determine if we want/need POT files
- Determine how/if this structure will work differently in SVN
- Determine how Pootle will integrate with the php.net auth system
(for online editing)
- Explore also using transifex
- Explore integration with doc-editor
- Explore how we might cache DocBook for unchanged PO files
- Explore how we might handle CAT and TM (translation memory)
- Explore renaming phpdoc to doc or docs during move to SVN
Pootle offers statistics, QA tools and online editing that is
specialized for PO files. All thoughts, questions and concerns are
welcome.
Regards,
Philip
