i18n of bzr

[Martin Pool]

2009/11/16 INADA Naoki <songofacandy at gmail.com>:
> Hi all.
>
> Japanese translator team wants to translate bzr's help messages.

I think that would be great.

Alexander is right that Python's expensive function calls may cause a
performance hit from widespread use of gettext.  However, there may be
some options: we could write a small C shim for _() and _N(), or
perhaps better we could just avoid evaluating these except on strings
that are actually going to be shown to the user.  In a typical run
there are probably only less than 10 i18able strings actually printed
out.  At any rate we can start on this.

I probably would like someone to check it doesn't noticeably affect
the speed of 'bzr st' before merging it.

I don't have any objection to putting help into the topics directory.

> I read this page.
> http://bazaar-vcs.org/DraftSpecs/I18nSupport
>
> Does the i18n is on roadmap?

It is in the sense that we'd like to do it.  I don't expect to
directly assign Canonical people to spend work time on it.  However we
will help people get it in, through the patch pilot and a general
renewed commitment to unblocking contributions.

> Can we translate bzr's help by Ubuntu 10.04 LTS released?

We want to put bzr into bugfix-only mode on a 2.1 branch targeted at
Ubuntu 10.04 by about February.  If people work on this I think it's
feasible i18n could be in that release.  I think it will be reasonable
to continue adding new translations after that date, and indeed even
after the 10.04 final release through language-pack updates.

I think getting in a translation of even just one command soon would
be very good.  Then we can shake out any problems before the freeze
approaches.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>