Launchpad Translations

Development
1

The Ubuntu Launchpad service has some features not available through
SourceForge.

One really useful service is the translations web interface:
https://translations.launchpad.net/avogadro

I’ve imported a test template from trunk – created using ts2po. (The
problem is that Launchpad won’t import Qt files directly.) So far, I
don’t know how to migrate the existing French, UK, and German Avogadro
translations. I also haven’t tried the reverse yet – going from po to
the ts files.

Hopefully, LaserJock can help a bit with getting the Avogadro
Launchpad site in better order.

Also, I have some questions for translators:

  1. Should I just remove the existing translations from Launchpad and
    we’ll continue to do those via Linguist?
  2. Does the interface seem useful for other languages? Ubuntu has
    loads of possible languages – the list that’s currently on there
    would be very nice for Avogadro 1.0!
  3. The current ts2po generates tons of duplicate strings. Is it worth
    hacking a version which just generates the unique strings? In this
    case, I’m not sure how the resulting ts file would work in Linguist.

Cheers,
-Geoff

2

I’d like to mention that we have some initial translations available
through Launchpad for Spanish and Portuguese.
https://translations.launchpad.net/avogadro/

I can take these PO files and use the po2ts program – I’ve done this
in trunk. Eventually I want to add Makefile targets to do this semi-
automatically. (This will use the ts2po, po2ts programs and the
scripts I just uploaded, which use xgettext.)

I just uploaded a new POT (template) with the current SVN trunk,
because some folks have been pretty productive on Launchpad!

Some problems I’m trying to solve:

  • Merging work done in both types of files (e.g., Benoit’s French
    translation and the messages on Launchpad for French.)
    I /think/ I’ve found a solution, but I’ll have to wait for
    Launchpad to merge a new set of files.
  • Adding translation status pages to the wiki – let people know that
    French is 90% translated, or whatever.
  • Handling branches – I haven’t used Launchpad before, so I don’t
    know how to indicate that we have trunk and a stable 0.8 branch.

I still don’t know the merits of Qt Linguist vs. Launchpad. The latter
involves more work, but it’s already gotten us some additional
translators!

Cheers,
-Geoff