Re: [Hydrogen-devel] Translations

[<tr...@tu...>]

Hi Przemek

Le 2018-04-04 12:09, el.pescado a écrit :
> I have made two observations about technical aspects of translations.
> First, I noticed that we have both *.ts and *.qm files in repository.
> As I understand, *.ts are "source" translations, which are worked on;
> and *.qm files are macine-readable translations that are used by
> application, and are generated from corresponding *.ts files.

Correct.


> If so, does it make sense to keep *.qm files in repository?
> We could generate them at build time.

If you can do that, it'd be great. That's how most software are doing.
There might be a rational behind Hydrogen providing the qm files but
I'm not aware of such a thing.

mauser, maybe do you know something about it ?


> Second, I am thinking whether we should ship incomplete translations
> (say, below 70% messages). I think spotty translations make poor user
> experience, and having English UI is better than having half message
> localized and half left untranslated. What do you think?

I'm shared here.

On one hand, it *can* give a poor user experience.
On the other hand, it *can* still help some people to deal with the 
software
which wouldn't be able to read/understand English at all.

We have no way to know which hand overcomes the other here. There are 
just
and only personal opinion of this matter which doesn't help to choose 
one
way or the other.

Don't forget that, as developers, we need to provide a way for the
translators with basic building knowledge to build Hydrogen with
their translation for them to be able to check.



Given all of that, what I'd suggest is to provide a way to switch 
between
language from within the interface (without restarting the software 
would
be great) and the application to remind inf the conf file what is the 
user
choice. Audacity does that and I think this is very great.

@Przemek and others devs, would you be aware of some technical issues
preventing from doing so?


Olivier