Translation testing with x-test

[David Edmundson]

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 12:37 AM, David Edmundson
> <david at davidedmundson.co.uk> wrote:
>> Just had a thought when making a checklist for plasma applets, we
>> should probably check translations.
>> Not the translation itself, simply that all strings are going through
>> i18n() calls, and the source has the correct Messages.sh to extract
>> these messages.
>> It's quite easy to make a mistake in your code to not include the
>> correct translation catalogue, or to extract the strings to a file
>> that is never loaded. Given most developers develop and test in
>> English no-one notices till after release. In KDE Telepathy we made a
>> _lot_ of mistakes with regards to translation.
>>
>> The good news is that it's really easy to test, /if/ you have the right set up.
>>
>> All strings in KDE are automatically translated into a "language"
>> called x-test, this simply prepends and appends every i18n'd message
>> with "xx"
>> http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tools#Internationalization_.28i18n.29_Tools
>>
>> If you ever see a message without these "xx" wrappers you know
>> something is wrong.
>>
>> Unfortunately this is quite tricky to set up:
>> http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Localization/Building_KDE's_l10n_Module
>>
>> and no distribution in their right mind will ever package x-test, so
>> it has to be fetched and installed locally.
>>
>> Would it be worth:
>>  - making this part of the testing check-list for an application
>> (especially the new apps + applets)
>>  - asking distros to package l10n-x-test. Kubuntu could do it solely
>> in project-neon perhaps.
>
> Why Neon? This seems a tad restrictive as one needs to run the neon
> installation to use it, then. One of the kubuntu PPAs would be as good
> a place, we could just ask them. Jonathan?
>
Done some more investigating, it's not even published on KDE FTP sites:
ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.8.3/src/kde-l10n/

Which is probably why no-one packages it.
In a sense it's for a good reason, to avoid a user installing this by
accident then having it set to show "xxxx"s everywhere.
Perhaps we should check with the i18n team, in particular with Albert
Astals Cid.

No point making changes if general consensus is that this is a rubbish
idea anyway.