Is it possible to improve generating .pot files from English .docbook files?

[Jaap Woldringh]

Op 30-01-17 om 15:42 schreef Thomas Friedrichsmeier:
> If there was a way to mark up up the translatable bits inside the
> <programlisting/>s such that only those will be extracted, that would
> probably help translators a lot. Is there a way to do this?
>
> Regards
> Thomas

It's not only in the program listings that translating or not 
translating is a problem. Also outside the listings, the examples are 
discussed, and if in the discussion things have other names (ids ?), no 
one is to understand and the listings, and the discussion.

In a second pass I intend to adjust the discussion to the examples, so 
that I 'll keep the names in the examples intact, and in the discussion 
use them too, with a translation of what the names mean. Hope that it 
makes things clear to the newbe user, and, increases their English 
vocabulary :).

This makes this translation different from the ones I have done so far.

The documentation is very technical, of necessity, but still one of the 
things in my (short) list of possible improvements is just that: can it 
not be made less technical, using language every native English speaker 
understands. For someone without any programming experience (and if they 
have they don't need most of the documentation), much is incomprehensible.

The other thing on my short list so far, is long sentences. Shorter 
sentences are necessary. Most people who need a translation are people 
with less than a university education, for otherwise they would use the 
English, original text. Possibly this is for transators only: to chop 
long sentences into shorter ones?

It's becoming more and more clear to me that I need to do some more 
passes through the entire document.

There is one thing that scares me though: if this text is only 
provisory, and needs to be translated again sometime later, I must say 
that I shudder at that idea... but trying to translate it as it is now, 
gives you the chance to get suggestions from me :) for what they are 
worth. And possibly from other translators.

Greets,

Jaap