I think it is better to try building Gretl with partial translation (5% of translated strings is enough) to not trap into situation when produced, but already translated xmls are wrong and require some really tricky work to repair them. After the translation process with the po4a is verified to produce technically valid and usable translations it will be reasonable to put some work into this process.

I'm java programmer and have recently got my dose of building C-program at work (with aclocal, autoconf, automake) but still do not understand what is going on in this world. So I can not promise that I will be capable of verifying this process myself.

2012/10/1 Henrique Andrade <henrique.coelho@gmail.com>

Dear Ivan and Hélio,

I really think translating using PO files easier and funnier :-)
The use of PO makes things more clear for someone like me
that doesn't know enough programming.

Let me tell you my personal experience with the translation of
the help system.

Some time ago, I tried to translate the help system directly from
the XML files. The problem with that approach is that I got stuck
in many occasions because I did not know if some words are
"translatable" words or "xml" words.

In addition, it was hard to maintain things up to date every
time Allin and Jack changed the English help files.

That said, I can see some possibilities. Instead of adding part
of the Gretl project into Launchpad, we could just transform the
XML files into PO files using po4a and put the PO files into CVS.

This is a really good approach for an inexperienced translator
like me :-), but it introduces two more steps into Allin's work: He
will need to create the PO and, after our translation work, he will
generate the XML files.

Because our programmers (Allin and Jack) have really enough
work in developing and maintenance of Gretl, I think that
suggestion is not good.

That said, I'll keep working on PO files created by Ivan until I can
make a "complete" translation. During this time, I'll try to learn
more about XML in order to update the translation without using
PO files, as suggested by Hélio.

Best regards,
Henrique

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