Lokalization for KDE AppStream AppData files

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi!
I am working on bringing AppData to KDE. AppData is a XML-based
metadata format to enhance information displayed about applications in
software-centers. It, for example, includes long descriptions of an
application, homepage links, donation-links, screenshot-info and some
other information about the application.
AppStream is a Freedesktop project enabling us to build cross-distro
software centers. GNOME is already making heavy use of it for their
GNOME-Software application, and KDE also uses it already in Apper and
probably Muon soon.
One challenge for KDE is how to handle localizations for AppData information.
I would propose the following:
 * KDE applications ship an <app>.appdata.xml.in file, containing the
raw, untranslated data.
 * We extend messages.sh to scan the XML file and return the found
strings to the generic pot file, which is then translated by our
localization teams as usual.
 * At build-time, we use intltool[1] to merge the translation with the
AppData file, then install it into it's target directory.
This is basically it. The only thing KDE projects need to do is to
edit their Messages.sh and depend on intltool to merge localization. I
could also provide a cmake macro for doing that to
extra-cmake-modules, if needed.
Do you have comments or suggestions on this?
I would later add it to the wiki page I'm doing to describe how KDE
projects which want to use AppData can easily use it.
Kind regards,
    Matthias

Links:
[1]: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/intltool/
AppStream: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/
AppData: http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/appdata/
greetings to people who watched my FOSDEM talk ;-)

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