On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:37:39 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
Then why, to pick an example, is there no second or
third show/hide link
in the header of RC in a default installation of de, fa, lt, ro, th or
wa? It's been 11 months since I implemented that feature. They don't
propagate, we need a way to flag messages needing translation.
We do indeed. I have a friend who is part of the Welsh translation
team for GNOME, and they have all sorts of automated statistics
telling them what is unfinished, out of date, etc. I'm sure there are
tools out there somewhere which we could adapt to our needs.
Or maybe a home-grown system is enough - basically, a database or
somesuch with the following fields:
* Language
* Release (so that, for instance, 1.3.x and 1.4.x can both have
appropriate translations)
* Message name
* Last translated (if we assume that En will always be the master, we
can just compare <date of last change to En> with <date of last change
in this language> to see if the message is up to date)
From this, we can produce pretty graphs like GNOME does
(
http://l10n-status.gnome.org/gnome-2.10/index.html) so people can see
just how far their language is lagging behind, and which messages it
is that have changed/been added.
Add to this some kind of web interface for doing the translations
themselves, to replace the "run a wiki and export the MediaWiki:
namespace occasionally" habit, and ... yes, I know, "so code it then,
Rowan". Maybe I should... [it's possible, but I doubt I will].
Of course, we'd then need anyone who checks in a patch that affects
the meaning or function of a message, even if the English message can
stay the same, to reset the timestamp on the En entry; but if we
forced them through the translation interface too, I guess this would
happen when things did change, anyway.
Oh, and then there's the problem of individual wikis having editted
their MediaWiki: pages, and so needing to merge their changes with
those of a new software version when it's finally released. We need to
notify them of that somehow, too. [Although, come to that, users need
somewhere to notify a sysop that a message needs changing *anyway*...]
But maybe I should stop dreaming now!
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]