[Kde-games-devel] Fwd: kgoldrunner data

[Luciano Montanaro]

On 6/24/07, Ian Wadham <ianw2 at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:06 am, Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> > I had a look at the KGoldrunner data files in search of hints on how to
> > translate some level title.
> >
> Hi again, Luciano.  I guess you must be a translator.  I am the author
> of KGoldrunner.

Good guess. And nice to meet you! (!!)

 A few months ago I changed the game-data format
> so that scripty can extract messages directly.  Previously I had a
> parallel copy of the messages in a pseudo-program file in the /src
> area, called data_messages.cpp, but that was causing a few problems.
>
> As far as I know, the texts of the messages themselves should be
> *unchanged* from KDE 3 to KDE 4 and you should have no new
> translation work to do, except for a whole new game (State of Terror,
> in file "game_sot.txt").  I did quite a lot of testing of the new data
> format and went on the translators' list for a while to get help with it.
> If the messages are *not* the same, something is going wrong and
> I need to know more, so please email me details directly about that.
>

Yes, well, there have been a few canges, but nothing large.

> Re hints on translating, I would like to put some i18nc in the game-data
> sometime, but I would also have to change the game-loading code (low
> priority, at the moment).  For now, the only hints on level titles are what
> the level looks like on the screen or how it plays.
>
> > I have found there are a lot of messages that are marked as NOTi18n,
> > which I think was a workaround to prevent messages to get included
> > during a message freeze. Is it safe to remove the NOT now?
> >
> "NOTi18n" is deliberate.  In championship-level games the hints are
> rather lengthy and I do not wish to place a burden on N translators for
> the sake of levels that might have only a few players in N languages.
> Also anybody who is that good a player might also understand English
> well or at least have a friend who does.
>

Well, I have been translating really useless messages in the past, but
I do not think translating these would be a waste of effort. And you
are wrong about the level of English uderstanding, especially if you
count younger people (Well, in my time, I used games as an opportunity
to improve my English... but then what's the point in translating the
game at all?). Anyway, it's up to you, but I think that marking the
messages as translatable would be a good move, and it would be better
to do it now than later in the development cycle. At worst, some of
the translations will be incomplete --- big deal.

> The whole game-data format is a pseudo-C++ code fragment that is
> acceptable to xgettext, so the messages not to be translated are placed
> in function parentheses and the pseudo function-name is "NOTi18n".
>
> > Moreover, many messages use the wrong punctuation (spaces befor ! or .),
> > and I think ellipsis use too many dots.......... :)
> >
> > I've changed the messages on my local copy and I'd like to commit them, if
> > it's actually ok to do so.
> >
> Please don't.  I've had this argument before.  If you do not like my
> my idiosyncratic style of English, too bad.  I will defend it to the
> death ..... :-) !!!!  And this *is* a game I am writing for, not a technical
> document.
>
> Actually, I cannot stop you changing the messages, but please
> spare a thought for translators in other languages.  Any change to
> a message is multiplied by N and creates extra work for them.  At
> least, if my new game-data format is working as intended, you will
> not break KGoldrunner translations world-wide in *all* languages,
> as the last guy did ... :-(
>

Ok, Ok, I'll leave the messages as they are. But in Italian they'll
lose the extra spaces. And I'm considering getting rid of the smileys
too! }:-)

> Cheers, Ian W.
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