Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Internationalization

[David Pfitzner <dwp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Artur Biesiadowski wrote:

> I'm actually thinking about writing something like global dictionary
> with civilization terms. <joda>In central repository all translations
> would be kept </joda>.

As someone said, effectively this is what gettext does.
Please lets not re-invent stuff we don't have to! :-)

Regarding modpacks, it seems to me the following are the 
principle options:

1. Use gettext markings on translatable strings in the ruleset file,
and use gettext tools etc to handle translations.  (With appropriate
changes to registry etc to handle the markings, eg, as done in a 
previous patch.)

2. Include translations directly in the ruleset files, and do
the translations "manually".

Option 1 gets alot of benefit from using gettext: the gettext
tools handle keeping track of translations, only translating 
each unique string once, fetching translated strings for 
different languages or falling back, etc.

The main thing it _doesn't_ do (I think) is allow one to 
distribute a modpack completely separate from the freeciv
distribution and still include translations.  Because the
translations have to be in the files compiled into freeciv. (?)

However, this would probably be a pretty rare thing to do
in practice anyway, so I think not much is lost.  I guess in 
principle we could even support both schemes (gettext for 
"built in" rulesets, and manual translations for modpacks), 
but that may be overkill.

(Actually, it would generally be not much problem to include
modpacks in the dist (though I'd prefer to change things a
bit to not require each one to have a separate directory)
except for ones which require new graphics that could be 
a bit bloaty...)

Regards,
-- David