[drupal-devel] Help system redesign

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2005, Grugnog wrote:

> On 9/25/05, piotrwww at krukowiecki.net <piotrwww at krukowiecki.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 11:52:46PM -0500, Larry Garfield wrote:
> > > On Saturday 24 September 2005 11:25 pm, Khalid B wrote:
> > > The idea is to not use PO files and t() in the first place for the help text,
> > > because for larger text strings they're much slower than a simple database
> > > hit.
> >
> > How are they slower?
>
> I think I am with Dries that a language web editing front end is
> probably the most important thing right now. Adding a new language
> could be a SQL dump and module. The main function of the module could
> just be to add it's language to the various language selection menus.

While I like the idea of adding a web interface for translations, I am
still of the opinion that PO files should be used for shipping
translations. They are a de-facto standard in the free software world.

I have been looking at available web interfaces. There seem to be two:
pootle and rosetta. Rosetta isn't really available as it is a hosted
service offered by the Ubuntu people. Uri Sharf uploaded some Drupal 4.5
(?) files and there are actually translations there. Sometimes in
locales not available in drupal.org.

If we want to have a webinterface for translations, we can a) use the
ubuntu service or b) setup pootle on our shiny new hardware. For pootle
I'll check with the CiviCRM people as they are using it and have
expressed interest in collaboration wrt translations. My only problem
with pootle is that it is written in Python. :p

My main aim is to get more complete (!) translations in more locales.
I've been working with translators for some time now and I think the
need to maintain translations in CVS is something that limits our growth
in this area.

Ideally a webservice should not only provide a webinterface but also
allow translators to upload their PO files.

> One useful thing could be to get this language web editor working on
> Drupal.org, so various people can collaborate to create the
> translations. It may be usefull to have some kind on 'notes' feature,
> where translators can add notes about a particular change (e.g. I
> changed 'ty' to 'uchaf' as this link takes users up a level, rather
> than to home).

I'd need to check if and which of the two interfaces offers this.

> If any import/export of translations is worked on I would suggest a
> XLIFF [1] standards based XML format would be better than:
> * a 'roll your own' XML format: as XLIFF translation tools are already
> available.
> * PO files: as XML has, I think, better facilities for full
> description of international character sets.

As Goba pointed out, this is not needed. And PO files of course support
charsets too.

Cheers,
	Gerhard