[haiku] Re: Proposals for the LocaleKit
- From: Kevin Ar18 <kevinar18@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 22:09:05 -0500
We need to establish some guidelines for coding to make strings
translator-friendly. I've discussed this with a few people, but I'd like to
enter it into the public record here. Translators need whole strings, not
fragments of messages built up using <<. Coders simply have to provide strings
like "There are %d of %d files left to copy" rather than "There are", "of", and
"files left to copy". If you browse the code of the Tracker Kit, you'll find
several examples of how *not* to be translator-friendly. Kirilla (whose true
identity evades me at the moment) has discussed the possibility of adding
printf-like functionality to BString. However you all decide to do it, though,
someone eventually is going to have to do fairly massive rewrites of
preexisting code to make it translator friendly. There are slews of people
ready to translate, but the material we have is not truely adequate. Many of
the existing translations already have this flaw and will need to be
significantly re-translated.
Look at it from the bright side:
* This work does not require extensive coding skills to do... meaning
* It would be a great way to get new coders involved, maybe even ones that are
afraid to do anything too difficult.
* As they fix things, it could let some people get familiar with the codebase
so they might contribute to harder stuff later.
* This offers a chance for someone new to come on board [how about you? :) ]
and help organize translations and help coders to know how to write their code
to be more translator-friendly
* This offers a chance to organize the whole translation effort better (and
again maybe with some new people on board who are not kernel hackers, etc...)
* This offers many non-coders and casual programmers something to do --
something that could actually involve a lot of effort.
>
As Haiku moves forward to R1, localization should become a higher
priority. What good is an English-only OS? I have some suggestions that
I'd like to have feedback on.
Don't be too worried about the project being "English only" right now. That is
not an odd thing; nor does it imply that language translation is undesirable.
It is quite common for open source projects to work together solely in English
(sometimes when a team is not even in an English speaking country). For all
anybody knows, Haiku may always remain English centric in the core
coding/development. Still, don't take that as any desire to avoid non-English
speakers. Instead, consider it a great opportunity to expand: have people who
are dedicated to working on translation issues, have people who try to bridge
language gaps on the website and forums, have people reaching out to
non-English speakers, and maybe even develop ways to interact with non-English
programmers who want to contribute to Haiku. Anyways, I hope that came across
as more encouraging of what opportunities there are in this area as opposed to
sounding negative. Overall, this would be one area where a lot of non-coders
or casual programmers could get involved -- something that would not require
lots of baby-sittying by the current programming team -- and something that
could attract more people.
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