RFC: How to translate help topics.

[INADA Naoki]

Hi, all.

I am implementing message extraction for i18n.
(see https://code.launchpad.net/~songofacandy/bzr/i18n-msgextract/+merge/60033 )

I want to translate help topics, command help and error message for user
before bzr-2.4. About command help and error message, using gettext and
Launchpad's Rosetta is good enough.

But about help topics, there are three type:

1. Written on separeted text file under bzrlib/help_topics/en/ (ex. eol.txt)
2. Written in bzrlib/help_topics/__init__.py (ex. global-options)
3. Dynamically generated. (ex. current-format)

(3) will be translated by custom way. So I want to decide how to
translate (1) and (2).

I think there are three ways we can use.

a. All topics translated using gettext.
b. Split (2) into text file and translate all topics as text file
   without gettext.
c. Translate (1) as text file and, (2) as gettext.


Advantage of text file over gettext is translaters can focus
translating one topic. And we can history with bzr.

Advantage of gettext is traceablity on changes in English document.
Splitting help topic per paragraph helps translaters to follow
changes in English.

Any thoughts?

-- 
INADA Naoki  <songofacandy at gmail.com>