About #7050 and not including on the catalog strings from applications already translated

[Marc Garcia]

Hi folks,

I'm going to work on ticket #7050 [1], and there are different options
that need to be discussed.

Let me summarize what ticket tries to fix, and what needs to be
decided...

Imagine that we have a Django project including three applications, A,
B and C. This project needs to be available in 3 languages (English as
main language and Catalan and German). Also imagine that we got
applications A and B from the Internet, and that the author already
translated them to some languages. A is translated in both Catalan and
German, and B just in German (the whole project including all
applications is coded in English).

App A (English, Catalan, German)
App B (English, German)
App C (English)

So what happens when we execute "python manage.py makemessages -a"?

Right now, what happens is that all strings from applications A, B and
C are included on the project catalog. Of course that's not optimal,
so we'll have to translate many strings that are already translated.

So, in the case of the A application, probably the best would be just
ignore it when creating the catalog.

In the case of the C application, probably we should include its
strings on catalogs for all languages.

But the most controversial part is what to do with B. Should we
include the strings from B in the Catalan catalog but not in the
German one? This i quite of messy. But if we don't do that, then it
should be translated inside the application, and that could be a
problem in some cases (may be the application is a external on our
subversion so we can't modify it).

More complicated would be if one application is partially translated
to a language. What to do in that case? Consider that the application
is translated? Consider that it's not? Add to our project catalog just
the strings that are not translated?

IMHO I would prefer to keep it simple, and just ignore applications
having a locale directory. Of course it'll be more work for developers
who will have to create catalogs for missing languages in localized
applications. And of course it'll be a problem if you don't have write
permissions on the application. But I think that is better for
(project) developers spending few time on creating some catalogs, than
on figure out how things work (or why things don't work as they
expect).

One thing I'm considering, is if it would it be worth creating a
parameter for the makemessages command (like --no-ignore) to force the
inclusion of all strings on the project catalog.

Thanks for sharing your opinion you too.

Regards,
Marc

[1] http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/7050

[Branko Vukelic]

I think that the best solution would be the one that is used for the
template system. Specify load paths for project-wide catalogs, and
default to application catalogs (not copy them to the common project
catalog, just use them as they are).

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Branko
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[Jannis Leidel]

Hi Marc,

> App A (English, Catalan, German)
> App B (English, German)
> App C (English)
>
> So what happens when we execute "python manage.py makemessages -a"?

Why not go a step further and let makemessages take an optional list
of apps (e.g. AppCommand) that will specifically be looked at. That
would allow us to make sure we don't miss some strings from globally
installed apps (e.g. via package manager) when creating a project
catalog.

> More complicated would be if one application is partially translated
> to a language. What to do in that case? Consider that the application
> is translated? Consider that it's not? Add to our project catalog just
> the strings that are not translated?

Ideally the partially translated app catalogs should be added to the
project catalog. Although that would require a sense of what is
actually in those files.

> IMHO I would prefer to keep it simple, and just ignore applications
> having a locale directory. Of course it'll be more work for developers
> who will have to create catalogs for missing languages in localized
> applications. And of course it'll be a problem if you don't have write
> permissions on the application. But I think that is better for
> (project) developers spending few time on creating some catalogs, than
> on figure out how things work (or why things don't work as they
> expect).
> One thing I'm considering, is if it would it be worth creating a
> parameter for the makemessages command (like --no-ignore) to force the
> inclusion of all strings on the project catalog.

Adding that feature seems worthwhile, adding a flag to disable it even
better.

Jannis