Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Mar 8, 2019, at 17:08, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <address@hidden>
>> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2019 10:48:46 +0900
>> 
>> I think what really needs to be discussed is:
>> 
>> • which strings do we extract
>> • how to rewrite the mix of code and strings
>> • how to extract the resulting strings
>> • how to process the translations for display in emacs
> 
> Extraction is just a technicality, it can be done in either of several
> possible ways.

Sure. I just meant that l10n issues (is PO "efficiency", etc.) are already 
solved, but i18n in general has to be implemented from scratch.

> And I don't understand what problems you see in the last item: what
> should be done there other than display the translated string with
> 'message' or insert it into the *Help* buffer?

As I wrote above: we have to implement everything from scratch.

> So I think you are bothered by stuff that is largely non-issues.  The
> most important issues IMO are different: (a) what methodology of
> extracting/marking translatable strings to choose so that this job
> doesn't become infeasible;

That's my 3 first points elegantly combined into one :)

> and (b) how to arrange the message catalogs
> so that they will be easy to maintain and update, given the modular
> nature of Emacs.

I'm not sure what you mean in "how to arrange ..." Do you mean: how to provide 
the l10n packages to translator communities ?

>  I think we should also take a better look at how the
> built-in help facilities generate documentation and other displayable
> strings from symbol names.  Macros such as define-minor-mode should
> also be scrutinized to see if there are some special problems there.
> 
> Once this is done, the methodology decided, and the necessary tools
> are available, the rest is just more or less mechanical work to
> convert more and more parts of Emacs.

Can't we start with a survey of the strings we want extracted in a given number 
of emacs core packages ?


Jean-Christophe Helary
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http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune