Localization Manager (addlocale)

[Was_Just19]

I have tried this script a few times.

I have had some minor niggles which I have been trying to figure out, and am posting now that I think I can explain them.

The problems show in a small few areas where the previous language may still be in a couple of lines in some packages. No amount of re-doing will fix it.

I believe it is due to incomplete translations.
I use British English as the default and it seems there are some bits not translated (or included if you like) from the US English.
So when I install French or Irish and then go back to UK English there are some French or Irish lines left in some packages.
I expect (haven't bothered yet) that if I go from French or Irish (two of the three I tried) to US English and then to UK English everything will be OK.
It is not a problem for me, just thought I might post it for info purposes.

Regards.

[pinoc]

Hi,

sorry to hear you are having problems. The best way to make sure they are not related to addlocale(1.8 is now in the repos) is to fully update your system before running addlocale. Please do NOT run addlocale on a fresh install without fully updating the system first!

Capnx and melodie: could you please
1) use only one (1) normal 2007 repo (not the 2009-OO repo as this has only OO and nothing else!), then fully update your system using the single normal 2007 repo. Only at this point, when your system is fully updated and has no broken packages or thelike, you could then
2a) uninstall the old version of OO and follow Tex' instructions http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=26&topic=54836.msg452315#msg452315 to install the new OO (using the section "pclinuxos/2009 openoffice" not 2007, and then installing task-openoffice3-<your locale>), then deleting (or disabling) the OO-repo from your /etc/apt/sources.list
2b) run addlocale 1.8 directly

@melodie: addlocale's primary target desktop is KDE and Gnome is not heavily tested. PCLOS-Gnome already has the option to change the local and you should be good with what is provided there. Addlocale will provide you with even more applications in the new locale on a Gnome desktop but it is absolutely crucial to first fully updated PCLOS-Gnome. Only if you run addlocale on a completely uptodate system we can attribute any errors to addlocale and I will have the chance to fix them.  Please do not try to do 3 things at the same time   In earlier posts you mentioned to have successfully used addlocale, so what was different now?

@Johnboy: thanks for the info. Yes, it is correct that some applications may not appear fully in the new locale simply because they are only partially translated. Please remember, addlocale only applies what is available but does not translate a single word!  For testing/validation/fixing: could you give me an example of which application appears in French after you switched to British English?

regards,
-pinoc

[Was_Just19]

pinoc,
           here is the last one I noticed. Digital Camera is shown in Irish Gaelic but everything else is in UK English. I am guessing there is no translation for Digital Camera in the UK English translation file.
  As I mentioned it is not a problem and I believe changing first to US English and then to UK English will result in "Digital Camera" appearing ---- although I have not tried it.



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[pinoc]

JohnBoy,

this is not an application but the KDE ControlCenter, correct? Having changed to UK English, do you still get the Irish entry after a complete reboot of the system? And if so, could you please try if changing first to the default (en_US should be quick) and then to UK English will resolve this issue? I can not try this myself because I do not have a digital camera here, so I do not have this entry 

[Was_Just19]

JohnBoy,

this is not an application but the KDE ControlCenter, correct? Having changed to UK English, do you still get the Irish entry after a complete reboot of the system? And if so, could you please try if changing first to the default (en_US should be quick) and then to UK English will resolve this issue? I can not try this myself because I do not have a digital camera here, so I do not have this entry 

Yes that is the KDE control center .... sorry should have said.
I don't have a camera plugged in either ... except my webcam.

When I get a little time I will test my theory of first going through US English and then back to UK English.
Not until later today 

EDIT

Update
               I got a couple of minutes and changed locale to US English and as suspected the Gaelic was changed, and then going back to UK English it remained the same. So I conclude that "Digital Camera" has not been translated in the UK English package for KDE Control Centre.

A couple of comments ....... addlocale could not end session and had to reboot. I did not wish to reboot at that time but had no way to delay it ..... the prompt offered only OK, and clicking on the "X" of the window just caused the reboot anyway. That happened for both language changes.
The prompt about the false message from Synaptic now seems to be unneeded ..... I did not get the message referred to (using 1.7 of addlocale).

Other than that not problems. The script does what it says it will, and does it extremely well.

OH!  I just noticed while typing this that the theme has also changed on my Desktop ..... or some part of it anyway. The top bar of Konqueror is a different colour than I had before this operation. Wonder why that happened? ..... not a big deal, just wondering .......

regards.

[melodie]

Hi pinoc,

No worry about this broken install : I fixed it, then I did sort of a bug report at the "broken packages" section of this forum:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=56815.0

What version ? The KDE version. Was addlocale guilty ? Not at all : it has perfectly done it's job, warning me that the system (which was not brand new, but just recent) was not fully up to date, and that I had to quit, then update, which I did.

The problem occurred at the end of the upgrade, and resulted in a sort of nonsense. So as I had kept a file containing the message errors from Synaptic, I was able to repair it the following time I had a moment available to look after it.

Additionnally, it's not an install I count with to work on ! At least not yet. I still have my Archlinux old, my Archlinux 2009 that replaces the old one,  and my MiniMe 2008 perfectly stable and capable ! (Plus 2 Archlinux'ses on the desktop, among which one of 2009 and x86_64 versioned, plus the PCLOS Gnome soon, after the virtualbox install, that makes a few !   ... at least 3 that are perfect to work with)

I'm very interested in the job you are doing for the localisations. Sure the Gnome version is almost perfect as far as localisation is implied, but I noticed yet some texts left in english, in the Center Control at the network section among some.

Does the Control Center belong to some specific application family ? Aren't there maybe some mo files to grab at Mandriva packages too ?   

[pinoc]

due to a little mishap the addlocale 1.8 rpm contains addlocale version 1.7. This is fixed now, so please wait a day or two to get the updated addlocale1.8 rpm. By the way, the initial window of addlocale shows the version you use.

@capnx,
did you succeed to update your system without errors? Addlocale needs an uptodate and error-free system to operate. Before doing anything, addlocale will test for a clean updated system, and if it finds any errors then it will let you know about it and exit without doing anything. If you can not update your system then you could report your issues in the Broken Packages section.

@JohnBoy,
thanks a lot for your comments!
- the logout/reboot: upon completion, a session logout should be sufficient. Yet, there are situations (i.e. running a Gnome session inside a KDE install) where the normal logout procedure does not work as expected, so I set a timer on the logout. If after a given time the logout has not completed, either because it's too slow or it didn't work for whatever other reason, then a reboot is enforced to apply the changes and the user has no means to change that, so it's ok.
- the prompt about the false message from Synaptic: that should only appear if Synaptic has to be reinstalled in order to get a new locale. If you 'go back' to a language which has been installed before then Synaptic does not need to be reinstalled and this message is indeed not needed. This is correct and I will fix that in a future version. At present, this is not a problem but simply a notifier window, nothing more. 

@ melodie,
good to hear you got it fixed and addlocale was not the culprit! Don't ask me anything about Gnome, as a die-hard KDE-fan I know virtually nothing about it. What I do like in GNOME is the easy switch between different languages, yet this comes at the expense of 200MB which was saved in the KDE installation iso to include other system software.  But then, once installed we do not care that much about disk-space and it would be nice to have an easy language switcher between different installed localizations. I have started with a kind of next-generation addlocale which should be faster and provide even localizations for which we do not even have translations in PCLOS, meaning I 'collect' (= steal  ) relevant information (mo-files) from other distros.  Then I plan to include something like a 'switchlocale' subroutine which would mimic the language switcher from Gnome, but these are only some ideas for now. All this needs to be implemented, tested, and may turn out to not work at all  , who knows, I will see what I can do and keep you posted on any progress.

good luck,
-pinoc

[melodie]

@ melodie,
(...)
What I do like in GNOME is the easy switch between different languages, yet this comes at the expense of 200MB which was saved in the KDE installation iso to include other system software.(...) I have started with a kind of next-generation Addlocale which should be faster and provide even localizations for which we do not even have translations in PCLOS, meaning I 'collect' (= steal  ) relevant information (mo-files) from other distributions.(...)

Hi,

What I do like in Gnome is the simpler access to the menus. Otherwise other Desktop Managers in that way please me too : for instance Xfce4, but when I tried it, no French locale was available for it ; for instance LXDE, but it seems to be available for Eeepc only, which I don't know really what it means : will it be fully compatible with an ordinary i686 PC ?

As about "steal" well no, Free is free, and GPL says you don't steal, but build upon other people who are willing to share their work ; about this matter, what about the PClinuxOS Control Center ? Isn't it Mandriva's work and don't they keep some translations for it that we could appreciate to have ?

[pinoc]

What I do like in Gnome is the simpler access to the menus

Please don't challenge me, you would only get a totally biased KDE praise 

ok, you could call it 'stealing' but you can also say it's searching and gathering relevant information from the internet, or even simpler, avoiding duplication of work already done by other translators, I'm sure they don't mind.  In fact, I wonder why there is no centralized common mo-file database, which is what I try to setup for the new addlocale version... Translators from all distros could report to as well as use such a centralized database. Moreover, this should also facilitate to continue the work started by other translators instead of translating from scratch and building a mo-file for Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, etc. They must have their reasons and maybe there is something I don't understand 

The translations for PCC are the mo-files inside the drak-xxx rpm packages, of course only if they are available for the chosen locale...

-p.

[melodie]

What I do like in Gnome is the simpler access to the menus

Please don't challenge me, you would only get a totally biased KDE praise 

Hi,

Troll Story ?   

ok, you could call it 'stealing' but you can also say it's searching and gathering relevant information from the internet, or even simpler, avoiding duplication of work already done by other translators, I'm sure they don't mind.

The usual things I always hear about. "Don't re-do what others have done before !" and "don't re-invent the wheel". (It's you who wrote "steal" : not me !   )

In fact, I wonder why there is no centralized common mo-file database, which is what I try to setup for the new addlocale version...

Maybe some leftovers from "the human side" ? 

They must have their reasons and maybe there is something I don't understand 

Seriously... maybe the distros not having all the same versions of applications at same time, would be a beginning of explanation ?

The translations for PCC are the mo-files inside the drak-xxx rpm packages, of course only if they are available for the chosen locale...

Then may I suppose theses are located in the 'SRPMS' directories of the mirrors ? Is that where we find the sources and the mo files inside ?

[pinoc]

melodie,

wrt mo-files, they are part of the normal rpms. Upon installation, the locale-specific mo-files of the rpm package for a given application are extracted and copied to /usr/share/locale/XX/LC_MESSAGES/application.mo. Once you installed a new locale, and the new locale must be active, the reinstallation of an existing application does nothing else than installing what was installed already (no harm) and, since now you have a new different locale active, copying the new locale specific mo-files for the new locale into the system. This is why you can only add one locale at a time, or you need to repeat this process. So, you need to reinstall only those applications which first, exist in the current system, and second, they must have mo-files for the new locale. Only applications fulfilling these 2 conditions are needed and that is all what the second part of addlocale does. Please also check this post http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=58&topic=55229.msg445818#msg445818 which provides some indications on how to get hold of mo-files. Once you have all mo-files for a set of locales available you can simply switch between the locales and that is exactly what Gnome does. On the other hand, once you have mo-files for a set of locales in KDE (by running addocale subsequently) you can equally switch between them and this ('switchlocale') is what I want to build in a future version. It already works now but does some unneeded reinstalls, no harm but not needed. The initial purpose of addlocale was simply one-way ticket: run it once to add a single locale to the default. From then on you don't need it again. A 'switchlocale' or 'play and see what 73 different desktop setups look like' should not be the main focus of the current version...

-p.

[melodie]

pinoc,

Ok ok, but where in the mypclinuxos portal forum or whatsoever are the informations about howto add translations (contribute to) to improve some missing sections ?

I don't know about other languages forums, but the french section does not move one toe, and I didn't even receive the slightest answer to my Happy New year post since last January. And talking about preceeding posts or activity, it looks like a dead cow.   

[pinoc]

@all, the updated addlocale 1.8 rpm is now in the repo, please ensure to use this version. The initial addlocale window shows the version in use.

Hi Melodie,

please check out this one: http://pootle.clever.cz/projects/pclinuxos-mime/ and I would be more than happy if you help getting more applications translated over at http://mypclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?board=118.0.  I know it looks like a 'dead cow' and it would be great if you can change that    In fact, I must admit that I myself never ever worked with or setup any new mo-files and I seriously doubt that I will ever have the time to translate any application. I have lot's of important things to do at work and it is already quite difficult for me to free up some time for any addlocale progress. Please don't think of me as a localization expert, this would be completely wrong, I know virtually nothing about it, seriously. I'm just a programmer who collected already available language-specific elements (and who knows what I missed) and put this info in a script for ease of use, nothing more.

best regards,
-pinoc

[capnx]

i've put off doing the addlocale for now b/c i don't want to mess with the new openoffice for now. maybe when the new version is rolled out in traditional repo methods, then i'd revisit this

thanks for ur help dude

[pinoc]

hey capnx,

good to hear from you! The new OO is supposed to come out by the end of this month, then we need to wait for the go-OO version of this one, and once that is in the repo we can try again. So far I think your setup is workable and that is already better than the English-only setup you had before, right?
We will get there, ok?

have a nice day,
-pinoc