[Localization] Localization update

[Samuel Klein]

Thanks for the feedback cmlenz; this original didn't go through to the
list. We are aiming to use the Fedora interface and implementation for
core software.  I'm not clear on how that will work for non-core
software made for the xo... there will be community activities that
have to be localized as well, in which case managing catalogs with a
reasonable interface might be desirable.

A reminder to all: If you are localizing the core code, you should be
keeping an eye on our project page on fedora --
     http://translate.fedoraproject.org/releases/olpc

Only Brazil is even close to complete.

We're having another discussion about localization and languages, with
IRC and a phone conf, this Sunday at 2pm.    (There are some active
language-learning projects going on now as well, whose material
in-activity could use some localization; see for instance [[colingo]]
on the wiki.)

SJ


On 6/29/07, Christopher Lenz <cmlenz at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Samuel,
>
> Am 22.06.2007 um 22:48 schrieb Samuel Klein:
> > 2. Noah noted earlier that cmlenz has been working on a Babel
> > Python library for localization; Christopher, can you write a bit
> > on the olpc wiki about how to use this in coordination with the
> > other parts of our l10n process?
> >    http://www.cmlenz.net/blog/2007/06/announcing_babe.html
>
> sorry about my lack of responsiveness so far. My problem is that I
> don't have much of an idea of where OLPC stands in regards to L10,
> what your requirements are, etc. And I have unfortunately not found
> the time yet to read up on all this on the wiki. So I'm not sure my
> input in this area is helpful.
>
> Babel is in relatively early stages, having just being announced.
> IMHO it certainly has the potential to become the definitive solution
> for I18n/L10n in Python (if you ignore zope.i18n and PyICU, which are
> of course viable options if the environment in question allows using
> them). But although many things are working nicely, we're not quite
> there yet, and some parts of the code need more work.
>
> Whether Babel would be a good fit for Python software on OLPC depends
> on your requirements:
>
> * For localization, do you really need more than the features Python
> includes, i.e. the POSIX-based "locale" module, the strftime/strptime
> functions, etc? Those parts simply call through to the operating
> systems locale database, and do an okay job most of the time. The
> primary focus of Babel is on web-based applications, where you can't
> use the "locale" module and the other builtin POSIX-based L10n
> functionality because it assumes there's only one locale per process
> at any one time.
>
> * For message catalogs (i.e. gettext), the value-add by Babel is not
> in *using* translations catalogs (you just use the builtin "gettext"
> module for that, basically), but in creating and managing them. It
> provides pure Python replacements for the most commonly used parts of
> the gettext/uniforum toolchain (xgettext, msgfmt, msgmerge, etc), and
> also lets Python web template languages plug in to the process. The
> real value-add is the latter, actually. If you don't need to support
> template engines and the like, and the GNU gettext tools are
> available, you can just use those for the same catalog management tasks.
>
> Babel certainly adds both convenience and sophistication to I18n/L10n
> even for Python-based client applications. But it does come at a
> cost: the disk footprint weighs in at almost 1MB (but that includes
> locale data for every language in the CLDR, which are a lot, and
> could be stripped down), and the locale data is loaded into memory
> for every locale used (I haven't actually measured memory usage, but
> based on the file sizes it should be around 50-100 KB). And of course
> all the number and date formatting is implemented in Python, and has
> not seen optimization beyond common-sense-based design choices.
>
> I'd be happy to answer any questions on how Babel might fit in with
> the OLPC Python apps, but at this point I simply haven't been able to
> collection sufficient background information to give really useful
> advice.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
> --
> Christopher Lenz
>    cmlenz at gmx.de
>    http://www.cmlenz.net/
>
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