[OctDev] octave-forge translation packages

[Paul K. <pki...@us...>]

All,

I suggest we put translations for various octave packages in a new 
top-level directory in the octave-forge CVS server:

	octave-lang

I recommend keeping the translation for each language as a separate 
distribution to reduce coordination efforts.  I don't want to wait 
until the translators for twenty different languages complete their 
work before releasing a package.  The translators don't want to dig 
through twenty different packages to see what needs to be translated.

What do the octave packagers for various platforms think about this?  
With complete translations, each language could add 1/2 Mb or more to 
the distribution.  Would the octave packaging system be able to fetch 
and install the language specific docs for the package being installed? 
  Can this be a post-install operation for the package manager?  
Individual packages should of course be able to be bundled with their 
own i18n.

We will need octave-lang/tools for things such as docstring extractors, 
hash string checkers and other programs to list what needs to be 
translated for each language.  I think the installation tools should be 
part of the octave packaging system.

We will need octave-lang/admin for scripts to build and maintain the 
online docs and distributions.

We will need octave-lang/zz for each language zz we wish to translate, 
including zz=en for those packages whose original language is not 
English.

Translations for the base system will go in octave-lang/zz/octave. 
Translations for individual packages (such as the packages in 
octave-forge and others) will go in octave-lang/zz/<package-name>.

The internal structure of the package directories will be dictated by 
the package system.  It will include translations of the usual 
packaging documents such as package description and README.  I suspect 
it will have a subdirectory for functions and maybe another for the 
manual and another to contain translated demos.  We will eventually 
need a directory for translated warnings, error messages, axis labels, 
etc.  We may also want replacement m-files for those functions which 
are to hard to translate string by string.  Somebody else will have to 
fill in the details.

As a convenience to translators, we will need the source documents in 
octave-lang/source/<package-name> with exactly the same structure as we 
want in zz tree.

Is this as simple as can be and no simpler?

- Paul