LanguagePackRoadmap

Revision 19 as of 2005-04-28 00:21:25

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Language Pack Roadmap

Status

Introduction

We want to extend the current scope of language packs and Rosetta integration to work with more than just application gettext translations.

Rationale

Scope and Use Cases

There are currently many files which are not handled by Rosetta and language packs: .desktop files, OpenOffice and Mozilla translations, .server files, and some special applications like gok. Also, KDE translations of Kubuntu are not contained in the current language packs.

Implementation Plan

Data Preservation and Migration

No data needs to be preserved when adding things to language packs.

Packages Affected

Supporting KDE:

  • Split language packs and support packages into -other, -kde, -gnome.

  • language-support-kde-lang should depend on kde-i18n-lang.

.desktop files:

  • pkgstriptranslations will store .desktop files in translation tarballs.
  • Rosetta will export a file that maps desktop file names to translation domains
  • langpack-o-matic uses intltool/homebrew script to add new translations to desktop

  • files are shipped in a parallel directory hierarchy /usr/share/applications-langpack; those files are preferred over the files in /usr/share/applications; it only requires very few changes to lookup files into this additional directory.

Potentially many affected packages:

  • Some packages do not include/produce a POT file.
  • Ubuntu-specific strings are usually not contained in POT files.
  • We have to fix those packages to produce an up to date POT file at build time.
  • We have to find a heuristics to detect packages which need to be fixed:
    • We can't compare PO and POT files because it is possible and valid for PO files to be out of date.
    • List generation: set of packages whose tarball does not contain a POT file + set of packages whose diff.gz touches translations (this probably catches too much, though).

User Interface Requirements

not applicable

Outstanding Issues

UDU BOF Agenda

  • Handle OO.o/Ffox translations in Rosetta

  • gok also ships translatable stuff in XML files (special case)

  • Translate .server files.
  • Handle and ship translations of the Mozilla startup pages.

UDU Pre-Work