"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:
| It sounds like a Good Thing in principle, but I don't know what
| would be involved in internationalizing the message strings. It
| might substantially raise the level of effort for development, since
| some of the developers are not adept at languages other than English
| and hence others would have to maintain the message catalogs. Minor
| changes in messages would become more difficult I suppose.
The developers should not be bothered by the localisations (l10n). It
might be the best to use François Pinard's "Robot"; let me quote
François' description (note: "PO files" are the message catalog files):
======================================================================>
The Translation Project robot (or TP-Robot) is an email service which
takes care of PO file submissions. It checks if the file is receivable,
that is, if a translator has filled her disclaimer, and if her team allows
her to do the work. It also calls `msgfmt' to see if the PO file is healthy.
You do not really ought to use the robot, but when you do, you spare some
time for the translation coordinator to do more useful things (thanks!).
To use the robot, your Subject line should look like:
TP-Robot PACKAGE-VERSION.TEAM.po
and the whole thing should be sent to <translation@iro.umontreal.ca>.
You may expect a reply within minutes. If you need help to resolve
questions, or if you plainly suspect the robot behaves poorly, you may
directly write the translation coordinator. However, if you do so, be
careful _not_ to start your message Subject with TP-Robot! :-)
The robot is a bit dumb and does not understand MIME yet. So, for a
while, please package your PO file with `uuencode' (either old `begin'
or new `begin-base64' format) rather than MIME or `shar'. You may
also use a plain text copy, if you are real sure that we have 8-bit
clean email and if you avoid adding your signature after the PO file.
If the Robot cannot decipher your packaging, it will merely forward it
to the coordinator for manual unpacking.
======================================================================<
You'll find detailed info about i18n/l10n at François' web pages:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/
And of course, it'd be nice to have frontend with NLS ("native language
support")!
| We would also need to stay compatible with the licensing for the rest of
| Postgres, but that may not be an issue here. I assume that there are no
| runtime restrictions on the code and files gettext produces?
Yes, you're right. The libintl is covered by the LGPL, like other GNU
libraries.
--
Karl Eichwalder