[Sugar-devel] [FEATURE] Enhanced Gettext

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

Hello,

Below is a proposal which I hope to get into Sugar 0.88. Note that
this does not address Glucose translations.
URL: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Enhanced_Gettext

Thanks,
Sayamindu

== Summary ==
Enhanced Gettext adds an extra search path for translation files for
Sugar activities. This would allow deployments to add and update
activity translations independently of the release process.

== Owner ==
    * Name: Sayamindu Dasgupta
    * Email: sayamindu at gmail dot com

== Current status ==
    * Targeted release: 0.88
    * Last updated: Jan 3, 2010
    * Percentage of completion: 10%

== Detailed Description ==

Currently the translation process is tightly coupled with the release
workflow. In order to get the latest translations for a particular
activity, deployments need to either wait for the activity maintainer
make a new release, or use the language pack mechanism, which is
distribution specific, and an ugly hack at its best. This feature
would add a sugar.gettext module, which, if used by activities, will
search an alternative path (configurable via GConf) for translations
before looking into the activity directory (where the translations
present in the original release bundle exist.

== Benefit to Sugar ==
    * Life becomes a lot easier for deployments who rely on a small
translator team to accomplish the job (smaller translation teams find
it more difficult to keep up with the Sugar release cycle)
    * Activity maintainers do not have to worry about making new
releases to incorporate newer translations.
    * See thread starting from
http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg10663.html

== Scope ==
    * A sugar.gettext module needs to be created in sugar-toolkit (or
sugar-base ??)
    * Activity authors need to do import sugar.gettext instead of
import gettext (it may make sense to keep the import sugar.gettext in
a try: block to retain backward compatibility)

== UI Design ==
N/A

== Contingency Plan ==
None necessary, revert to previous release behaviour.

== Documentation ==

    * See thread starting from
http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg10663.html




-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]