[Kbabel] Default behaviors (header-wise) in KBabel

[Nicolas Goutte]

On Friday 28 October 2005 10:38, Daichi Kawahata wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm from Xfce, in which I've been working as translation supervisor
> (PO file commit, fixing errors etc.), now I have noticed something
> unpleasant from KBabel:
>

>   o It replaces given proper header string at `Project-Id-Version'
>     with ISO 639 language code.

In fact it is the filename that it places there.

(In KDE, PO files are not named by the language but like the corresponding POT 
file. And the directories are ordered by language, not by POT file.)

>   o It keeps leaving strange comments at initial comment part.

I have tried to limit the impact of the "strange comments" in the KBabel 
version for KDE 3.5 by trying to remove all old strings of the kind.

However in your case, it seems that your name has been given in 2 different 
forms, so that KBabel cannot find that it is the same name.

>
> Please take a look at actual commit log,
>
>   http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce4-commits/2005-October/018807.html



>
> So my question is why Kbabel behaves like the above? 

It is for simplification of the translator's tasks.

(Of course the default of KBabel is more for KDE, as anyway old versions of 
KBabel could not handle Gettext's plurals for example.)

> as I've never
> used KDE, it's hard to figure the problem out, but I smelled there's
> some bad design at giving values to the PO header, at least Kbabel
> should warn at blank form (project name, contact address) if it exists
> but Kbabel shouldn't fill these forms with invalid values at the same
> time (there needs some guidance/tooltips for the translators), 

Normally with the project setting you can set nearly everything (but the 
"project name" of a PO file).

(The only bigger problem that I know is that the project wizard fails to ask 
some questions, like the language team email. So you have always to check the 
project setting (which is annoying as the wizard is supposed to avoid that.))

> to be
> more detailed, please read my post in the Xfce i18n ML also,
>
>   http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/xfce-i18n/2005-September/003277.html
>

I am not really understanding your critic about the language team that you 
have in that email,

The language team can be set correctly by KBabel, it is done often in KDE.

> I'm bit tired with KBabel users, and thanks for your considerations.

I am sorry about that you are tired to use KBabel.

As far as I know, return of experience of non-KDE users is sparse, so it is 
difficult to know what is needed.

You can also uses KDE Bugs: http://bugs.kde.org to report bugs and wishes that 
you would have for non-KDE projects.

For the KDE 3.5 branch we cannot do much anymore, as we are already in message 
freeze for weeks. So major changes will only be in KDE 4 unfortunately.

>

If you want an example how PO files look in KDE, you can look at:

http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/l10n/ca/messages/kdebase/
kwin.po?rev=468433&view=markup

for example (or other file of KDE's WebSVN.

> Regards,

Have a nice day!