Re: Translation of manuals (was: SES manual French translation)

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2024 22:58:46 -0800
> Cc: vincent.b.1@hotmail.fr, emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> There are plenty of issues with static IDing parts of a document.
> >
> > Sure.  We are in uncharted territory here, so issues are a legion.
> 
> I think the job will be easier if we use established tools and workflows
> if at all possible.

We could only recommend such tools.  The actual choice is up to the
person who works on translations.  If the choice of the tools also
affects the source form in which the translations are kept in the
repository, we will need to consider those aspects as well.

> >> I think po-mode already does that and all the "out of emacs" tools do
> >> too.
> >
> > Maybe so.  But I wouldn't assume that PO could be easily stretched to
> > this kind of jobs, since it wasn't originally designed for them.
> 
> IIUC, it's what Jean-Christophe's has already been using here:
> 
>     https://git.sr.ht/~brandelune/emacs_documentation_repository

That's one data point, yes.  I can speak for myself here: I would not
want to use PO for this kind of job.  Its way of showing the
documentation as a series of unrelated strings makes it hard to read
the document and understand what it's saying.  PO was originally
designed for translating message strings, which are generally
unrelated to one another, which is not the case here.

So yes, PO could be tweaked for this job, but I'm not sure this is the
best solution, certainly not for everyone.