Jonathan asked me to forward this to this list, for posterity ;-)
From: John Hatton [mailto:john_hat...@sil.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 11:51 AM
To: 'Jonathan & Veronica Coombs'
Cc: 'Eric Albright'; 'Ken Zook'; 'ron_...@sil.org';
'Michael_Coch...@sil.org'; 'doug_hi...@sil.org'; 'greg_aum...@sil.org'
Subject: Semantic Domains Via Launchpad? (was RE: fieldworks semantic
domains)
Hi Jonathan,
> I don't remember discussing this before. Sounds like a good idea to me,
> as long as people like me can still effectively manage our language's
> DDP stuff via dialup internet. (They say our city will be
> getting broadband "in a few months"; if so, I'll be able to broaden my
> horizons.)
Let me review what I understand.
1) People generally produce an sfm of the ddp.
2) FW has some way of merging that into a single xml file which is used for
all languages (seems undesirable, as it makes LSDev the bottleneck).
3) WeSay converts that into two files, one which is per-lang (examples) and
one that isn't (labels)(yuck).
4) If you put something (at least a program) on launchpad, multiple people
over time can contribute, review, etc. And strangers may come along and
translate it:
cid:image001....@01C83733.18CD32E0
(many languages stop at around 33 because we recently added 33 more
strings).
So two things I would like to accomplish.
1) Get wesay so there is exactly one file per Semantic domain list in a
single language, Ron's or otherwise.
2) Explore how unwieldy it would be to make such files translatable via
launchpad (with offline option), in a way which is NOT limited to WeSay, but
useable in Toolbox and FW as well.
3) Have a simple story for how new versions from Ron, are managed.
4) Have a simple story for how alternate domain lists are managed
Here's a diagram which would give an answer to 1,2,and 3:
semdom.gif
Some things to notice:
1) Ron can edit new versions in Toolbox, no problem. These are fed back
into Launchpad.
2) Each new version of WeSay and FLEx grabs the latest bundle of PO files
from launchpad, converts them to its desired format.
The hurdle I see is how to label things such that a translator can be
successful translating a hierarchical, multi-valued thing in the flat
po/launchpad environment.
Here's what launchpad looks like:
cid:image003....@01C83733.AFF6B560
Regards
John Hatton
PaLaSo (Payap Language Software) & SIL International
