Albert Vilella avilella at gmail.com
Sat Oct 15 02:17:17 CDT 2005


Hi all,

Here is a question/proposal about keybindings in translations:

I was discussing with one of the OSS translators of my mother tongue
(Catalan) if there was any effort being done into consider the possible
collisions of the keybindings in a given menu/submenu.

If not, I would like to know if it would be possible to make Rosseta
aware of possible collisions for a given window/menu/submenu and of the
standard used for that word in other programs.

Right now, it seems that the only way to find those collisions is to
compile the program, run it, and get the prompts for something like:

avb at magneto:~$ gnumeric

** (gnumeric:8494): WARNING **: En el menú '_Fitxer', la clau 't' s'usa
per a 'Propie_tats...' i '_Tanca' simultàneament.

** (gnumeric:8494): WARNING **: En el menú '_Edita', la clau 'c' s'usa
per a '_Copia' i '_Cerca...' simultàneament.

** (gnumeric:8494): WARNING **: En el menú '_Edita', la clau 'e' s'usa
per a '_Enganxa' i 'Re_emplaça...' simultàneament.

** (gnumeric:8494): WARNING **: En el menú '_Edita', la clau 's' s'usa
per a '_Suprimeix' i '_Selecciona' simultàneament.

** (gnumeric:8494): WARNING **: En el menú '_Visualitza', la clau 'p'
s'usa per a '_Pantalla sencera...' i 'Am_pliació...' simultàneament.

The problem is that most of the translations are done on beta releases
of the programs, which means they have to be compiled, and dependencies
have to be tackled. This can hamper the quality of the translation at
the moment of a stable release.

Second part is about standardization: the GNOME HIG documentation
specifies that the same keybindings should be used for the same/similar
concepts in different programs. That is, Alt-F should open the "File"
menu, if exists, in program A and also in program B.

So I was wondering if Rosseta could interpret the language pack files
and give a suggestion, for a given language, of the most used word, in
the lines of the "Currently Published Elsewhere:" option (but for single
words also).

Example:

gnumeric

In English:

-- Main Window

Alt-F -- opens the file menu
-- File Menu
   "t" -- for "properties"
   "c" -- for "close"
Alt-E -- opens the edit menu
[...]
and so on

In Catalan:
Alt-F -- opens the file menu
-- File Menu
   "t" -- for "properties" (ca_ES: propie_tats)
   "t" -- **collides** with "close" (ca_ES: _Tanca)
[...]

Then, assuming that this entries are inside the same file, here Rosseta
would:

(1) warn of the collision for "propie_tats" and "_Tanca", 

(2) and give the number of times "Tan_ca" or "_Tanca" are seen elsewhere
in the language translations, so that the translator can decide to
change it in one way or another.

In this other example:

'_Connectors...' and '_Corregeix automàticament...'

Rosseta would give the number of "_Corregeix" found, in single word-wise
fashion, for that language.

How do feel about all this?

Bests,

    Albert.

PS: (Sorry for the lengthy email)




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