Re: What's Next...

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at fakkir dot net>]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2001 at 12:56:03AM -0700, am sa wrote:
> Assalam alaikum:
> 
> What happened to the dictionary program you guys had
> programmed? is there any body administring it? what is
> the URL for it? .

It's kind of on-hold. The codebase is present (check cvs under
arabeyes/web/dict/). Sameer has begun it and then vanished to thin air! Nadim
is in the process of reviving that project as it is very essential.

> 
> I wonder that why there is no database based solution
> for translating the files? I am thinking about a
> system which will search the source code or the pot
> files for specific pattern which will be followed by
> the programmers for getting the localized string then
> and they will group the entries for the same
> dialog/menu/resource entries in some how mechanism and
> the database will be filled with the entries with the
> ability by some web interface to compare the string
> for a specific language and will put the suggessions
> already entered for similar msgid with support for
> putting different msgstr with each entry in the source
> code or the pot file, and after that will generate the
> pot files for each language.

Sounds like an AI solution ;) Actually, that's a little of an overkill. There
are tools which will hopefully soon enough become usable for Arabic (kbabel),
for translation. It is a sophisticated translation tool used by most
translators (with a few exceptions like Arabic where the support is not there
yet).

> 
> This will ease the consistancy of the translation and
> will make lot of more speed/error free than the CVS
> system which is more optimized for the real
> programming jobs.
> 

The CVS system is useful for all kinds of project, translations or otherwise.
the issue of consistency however is very important. I think the solution to
that is a unified dictionary/glossary. If you're into perl/sql then feel free
to play with the code (you do have commit rights!) ;) [i know very little about perl].


later
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