Localization of TurtleArt

[Alexander Todorov]

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Hello everybody,
I've spent some time thinking about this ticket:
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/3585

TurtleArt developer(s) have decided to use gif images that represent different
shapes with text inside. What we need is a helper script that will take the
translations from the PO file and apply them on no-text image to produce the
localized image.

<pseudo_code>

helper(base image, text from PO) = localized image

</pseudo_code>

The idea is simple but I still hit some issues. Any help or ideas will be
appreciated.

1) Most of the images have a single word or couple of words next to each other.
Some of them like if-then or if-then-else have text which is not on a single
line. e.g.

if
  ----- then


if
 ----- then

 ----- else

I'm not sure how we can automate that easily without specifying coordinates
where the text should appear. A possible solution is to divide all these strings
into different layers and make the helper/PO aware of them.

2) There are some "block" images that show all available blocks for the chosen
category. I guess they fall in 1) if we talk about automating their localization.

3) The source files are Photoshop PSD ones. Is that an open format? I don't
really know but still haven't found a tool that can work with them properly
except GIMP. And isn't against OLPC vision to use commercial software to produce
 an OLPC activity? I'm willing to implement the helper mentioned above but I'd
prefer some graphics format that I can manipulate easily in code. We can also
upload the base images to git.

4) What will happen with all the localized images? How they will be distributed.
We certainly don't want all other languages hanging around and occupying disk
space when they are not necessary. At present the English ones are 728KB.
Multiply that by 10/20 languages and we're talking about MBs here.

Thanks,
Alexander.
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