Translating the Windows installer

Windows installer for GIMP has till now always been in English only,
although the installer always shipped with all translations that are
included with GIMP. It would be nice, if the installer was translated
as well, but it uses it's own translation format, which is quite
different from gettext's .po catalogs. What would be the best way to
handle this translation?

> Von: Torsten Neuer <tneuer@inwise.de>

> Am Montag, 10. Mai 2010 23:34:18 schrieb Jernej Simončič:
> > Windows installer for GIMP has till now always been in English only,
> > although the installer always shipped with all translations that are
> > included with GIMP. It would be nice, if the installer was translated
> > as well, but it uses it's own translation format, which is quite
> > different from gettext's .po catalogs. What would be the best way to
> > handle this translation?
>
> This depends on how the translations are done in the Windows installer.
> Some installers use some kind of database which is not interchangable
> and require the installer software for editing. Others use plain text
> files (one for each language) which doe not require the installer
> software in order to be edited. In the latter case, editable language
> templates could be produced by copying the English variant.

AFAIK Innosetup uses the latter case.

I'm more concerned about the translations themselves:

Jernej, please make sure that the translators know what the messages mean... there have been times when GIMP's translations clearly showed that the translators have never tried them when using GIMP :)


Regards,
Michael

On Tue, 11 May 2010 12:38:32 +0200, Michael Schumacher wrote:

> I'm more concerned about the translations themselves:
>
> Jernej, please make sure that the translators know what the messages
> mean... there have been times when GIMP's translations clearly showed
> that the translators have never tried them when using GIMP :)

I don't know details about InnoSetup, but I have experience with
Nullsoft installer (VLC, Dia and Inkscape).

Nullsoft has its own general (abstract) translated strings, maintained
by Nullsoft community. Apart from these, there are a few
application-specific strings, maintained by the application's
community; these application-specific strings are included with
programming directives in the main installer script.

Might be InnoSetup use a similar approach ?

Cristi

On Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 13:38:30, Cristian Secară wrote:

> Might be InnoSetup use a similar approach ?

It's pretty similar with Inno - there are some official translations
(these ship with Inno Setup itself, and are guaranteed to be correct
by their authors), unofficial translations available on
<http://www.jrsoftware.org/files/istrans/> and some strings that are
specific to GIMP's installer.

On Tue, 11 May 2010 14:36:10 +0200, Jernej Simončič wrote:

> It's pretty similar with Inno - there are some official translations
> (these ship with Inno Setup itself, and are guaranteed to be correct
> by their authors), unofficial translations available on
> <http://www.jrsoftware.org/files/istrans/> and some strings that are
> specific to GIMP's installer.

Just in case, if you enable the installer multilingual selection,
please let me check the (unofficial) translation for Romanian to be
included for GIMP package.
The existing global is ok overall, but still it requires some minor
adjustments.

Question – do you intend to use the Unicode version ?

Cristi

On Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 15:02:07, Cristian Secară wrote:

> Just in case, if you enable the installer multilingual selection,
> please let me check the (unofficial) translation for Romanian to be
> included for GIMP package.

Before I include any installer translation, I'd like to get the
GIMP-specific strings to be translated, too.

> Question – do you intend to use the Unicode version ?

Yes. Windows 2000 has been a requirement for a while now, so it makes
no sense not to use it.