Dear eToys devs,
Attached please find a comprehensive (but not necessarily complete) analysis of opportunities to make internationalization improvements in the eToys UI strings. I cannot guarantee that every comment made will (or should) result in changes, but I do believe that they all deserve careful consideration.
Note: I originally tried to send with attachment, but it was too large for list filters. The spreadsheet can be found attached to this ticket
http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-950
as
http://tracker.squeakland.org/secure/attachment/15092/All_eToys.ods
In the attached spreadsheet.
Column A is an overall sequential number of the strings, PO files are in alphabetical order. Sort on Column A to put them back in their original order in the PO files
Column B are my comments. The numbers in Column B are simply to group strings that should be considered together. Sort on Column B to group together similar strings to consider merging.
Column C is the filename of the originating PO file.
Column D is the location string from the PO file.
Column E is the strings themselves. Sort on Column E to look for more opportunities to merge strings
Further explanation of my brief comments:
The annotation "merge" in this context means that these strings are similar enough that it might be possible to harmonize them to a single spelling/format. Making these changes will result in fewer strings only in the cases where the variants occur in the same PO file (typically DrGeo), but it should also result in producing a more useful terminology PO file for eToys.
This may seem trivial until you realize that (quit, Quit, QUIT and Quit:) all count as different strings to Pootle and to poterminilogy. This can multiply the number of strings for a localizer to translate and result in missed opportunities to include a common term in the Terminology project.
The note "long, break up" suggests that this string might be easier for locaizers to handle if it were parsed into smaller consecutive strings rather than one long string. Yes, this will create more strings, not fewer, but they will be easier for locaizers to work with.
The note "caps x" and "caps y" point out inconsistency in capitalizing the X or Y in strings where they refer to variables or geometric axes.
Some strings may say "typo", but be correct, however, they will have a sister string where the typo occurs and notes have been made to make it easier to identify.
The note "URL in caps" occurs where "url" has been incorrectly written in lowercase, URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator and should be in caps.
The note "CamelCase" raises the question of whether it is necessary to use CamelCase in this string. CamelCase is a geeky way of grouping terms, but it is very difficult for localizers to understand whether the concatenated string can be localized or not. It is better to group words into single terms by using quotation marks rather than using Camel Case.
see Bert's comment in this message about CamelCase http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/etoys-dev/2011-June/006272.html
I have not forgotten my promise to calculate a new glossary file specific to eToys. I got some excellent feedback on this issue from Dupuy, but I would like to see fi some of these suggested i18n improvements could be made as it would result in a better poterminology glossary calulation.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
cjl