KubuntuTranslations

Summary

Rosetta should provide support for KDE applications so we get monthly updates like the rest of the packages and the users get a more user friendly way to do translations.

Rationale

There should be an easy way for non-coders to translate KDE applications, same as there is for Gnome. KDE has some specific issue which have prevented it being supported by Rosetta so far.

Also, we need KDE using Rosetta as part of the LaunchpadIntegration spec so the users will be able to reach the translation pages easily.

Use cases

Eilidh wants to translate adept into Gaelic, she doesn't know how to because Rosetta doesn't import KDE applications yet.

Scope

One problem is importing .po files from kde-i18n-xx into Rosetta because we have all .po files for a language inside the same sourcepackage instead of having it inside the sourcepackage that will use it.

Implementation

KDE uses its own gettext for .pot file generation. It is impractical to port the patch to the current gettext so we will upload the older gettext+kde patch to the Ubuntu archive. The KDE 3.5 packages, due to be created next week, will include rules to generate .pot files from this gettext-kde. We need this .pot generation to get any string update/addition we do in our packages so we get a full translated desktop.

k3b has a separate k3b-i18n package that only contains .po files. This can be merged into k3b to prevent an empty k3b-i18n binary package.

We will add equivalent functionality to KDE applications for Launchpad Integration, see kubuntu-launchpad-integration

Using the import queue added by the TranslationUpdates all .po and .pot imports will be linked to the right sourcepackage by a Rosetta Expert the first time we see them so they follow the layout we use for the rest of the distribution (having the .po files linked with the sourcepackages that use them).

Outstanding issues

  • KDE needs its specific gettext because they have their own way to handle plural forms: 
    • Plurals
msgid ""
"_n: blah blah\n"
"blah blah plural"
msgstr ""
"Singular translation"
"Plural translation."

Rosetta should recongnise these and show them in the way it does for standard plurals. This is not a blocker and is hard to implement as it means parsing the msgid. It will need a separate spec recognise-kde-plurals.

Translators should be credited, in the correct KDE format, following https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/TranslationCreditStrings

KubuntuTranslations (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:20 by localhost)