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+Localizing git-gui for your language
+====================================
+
+This short note is to help you, who reads and writes English and your
+own language, help us getting git-gui localized for more languages. It
+does not try to be a comprehensive manual of GNU gettext, which is the
+i18n framework we use, but tries to help you get started by covering the
+basics and how it is used in this project.
+
+1. Getting started.
+
+You would first need to have a working "git". Your distribution may
+have it as "git-core" package (do not get "GNU Interactive Tools" --
+that is a different "git"). You would also need GNU gettext toolchain
+to test the resulting translation out. Although you can work on message
+translation files with a regular text editor, it is a good idea to have
+specialized so-called "po file editors" (e.g. emacs po-mode, KBabel,
+poedit, GTranslator --- any of them would work well). Please install
+them.
+
+You would then need to clone the git-gui project repository and create
+a feature branch to begin working:
+
+ $ git clone git://repo.or.cz/git-gui.git
+ $ cd git-gui.git
+ $ git checkout -b my-translation
+
+The "git checkout" command creates a new branch to keep your work
+isolated and to make it simple to post your patch series when
+completed. You will be working on this branch.
+
+
+2. Starting a new language.
+
+In the git-gui directory is a po/ subdirectory. It has a handful of
+files whose names end with ".po". Is there a file that has messages
+in your language?
+
+If you do not know what your language should be named, you need to find
+it. This currently follows ISO 639-1 two letter codes:
+
+ http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
+
+For example, if you are preparing a translation for Afrikaans, the
+language code is "af". If there already is a translation for your
+language, you do not have to perform any step in this section, but keep
+reading, because we are covering the basics.
+
+If you did not find your language, you would need to start one yourself.
+Copy po/git-gui.pot file to po/af.po (replace "af" with the code for
+your language). Edit the first several lines to match existing *.po
+files to make it clear this is a translation table for git-gui project,
+and you are the primary translator. The result of your editing would
+look something like this:
+
+ # Translation of git-gui to Afrikaans
+ # Copyright (C) 2007 Shawn Pearce
+ # This file is distributed under the same license as the git-gui package.
+ # YOUR NAME <YOUR@E-MAIL.ADDRESS>, 2007.
+ #
+ #, fuzzy
+ msgid ""
+ msgstr ""
+ "Project-Id-Version: git-gui\n"
+ "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
+ "POT-Creation-Date: 2007-07-24 22:19+0300\n"
+ "PO-Revision-Date: 2007-07-25 18:00+0900\n"
+ "Last-Translator: YOUR NAME <YOUR@E-MAIL.ADDRESS>\n"
+ "Language-Team: Afrikaans\n"
+ "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
+ "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
+ "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
+
+You will find many pairs of a "msgid" line followed by a "msgstr" line.
+These pairs define how messages in git-gui application are translated to
+your language. Your primarily job is to fill in the empty double quote
+pairs on msgstr lines with the translation of the strings on their
+matching msgid lines. A few tips:
+
+ - Control characters, such as newlines, are written in backslash
+ sequence similar to string literals in the C programming language.
+ When the string given on a msgid line has such a backslash sequence,
+ you would typically want to have corresponding ones in the string on
+ your msgstr line.
+
+ - Some messages contain an optional context indicator at the end,
+ for example "@@noun" or "@@verb". This indicator allows the
+ software to select the correct translation depending upon the use.
+ The indicator is not actually part of the message and will not
+ be shown to the end-user.
+
+ If your language does not require a different translation you
+ will still need to translate both messages.
+
+ - Often the messages being translated are format strings given to
+ "printf()"-like functions. Make sure "%s", "%d", and "%%" in your
+ translated messages match the original.
+
+ When you have to change the order of words, you can add "<number>$"
+ between '%' and the conversion ('s', 'd', etc.) to say "<number>-th
+ parameter to the format string is used at this point". For example,
+ if the original message is like this:
+
+ "Length is %d, Weight is %d"
+
+ and if for whatever reason your translation needs to say weight first
+ and then length, you can say something like:
+
+ "WEIGHT IS %2$d, LENGTH IS %1$d"
+
+ A format specification with a '*' (asterisk) refers to *two* arguments
+ instead of one, hence the succeeding argument number is two higher
+ instead of one. So, a message like this
+
+ "%s ... %*i of %*i %s (%3i%%)"
+
+ is equivalent to
+
+ "%1$s ... %2$*i of %4$*i %6$s (%7$3i%%)"
+
+ - A long message can be split across multiple lines by ending the
+ string with a double quote, and starting another string on the next
+ line with another double quote. They will be concatenated in the
+ result. For example:
+
+ #: lib/remote_branch_delete.tcl:189
+ #, tcl-format
+ msgid ""
+ "One or more of the merge tests failed because you have not fetched the "
+ "necessary commits. Try fetching from %s first."
+ msgstr ""
+ "HERE YOU WILL WRITE YOUR TRANSLATION OF THE ABOVE LONG "
+ "MESSAGE IN YOUR LANGUAGE."
+
+You can test your translation by running "make install", which would
+create po/af.msg file and installs the result, and then running the
+resulting git-gui under your locale:
+
+ $ make install
+ $ LANG=af git-gui
+
+There is a trick to test your translation without first installing:
+
+ $ make
+ $ LANG=af ./git-gui.sh
+
+When you are satisfied with your translation, commit your changes then submit
+your patch series to the maintainer and the Git mailing list:
+
+ $ edit po/af.po
+ ... be sure to update Last-Translator: and
+ ... PO-Revision-Date: lines.
+ $ git add po/af.po
+ $ git commit -s -m 'git-gui: added Afrikaans translation.'
+ $ git send-email --to 'git@vger.kernel.org' \
+ --cc 'Pat Thoyts <patthoyts@users.sourceforge.net>' \
+ --subject 'git-gui: Afrikaans translation' \
+ master..
+
+
+3. Updating your translation.
+
+There may already be a translation for your language, and you may want
+to contribute an update. This may be because you would want to improve
+the translation of existing messages, or because the git-gui software
+itself was updated and there are new messages that need translation.
+
+In any case, make sure you are up-to-date before starting your work:
+
+ $ git checkout master
+ $ git pull
+
+In the former case, you will edit po/af.po (again, replace "af" with
+your language code), and after testing and updating the Last-Translator:
+and PO-Revision-Date: lines, "add/commit/push" as in the previous
+section.
+
+By comparing "POT-Creation-Date:" line in po/git-gui.pot file and
+po/af.po file, you can tell if there are new messages that need to be
+translated. You would need the GNU gettext package to perform this
+step.
+
+ $ msgmerge -U po/af.po po/git-gui.pot
+
+This updates po/af.po (again, replace "af" with your language
+code) so that it contains msgid lines (i.e. the original) that
+your translation did not have before. There are a few things to
+watch out for:
+
+ - The original text in English of an older message you already
+ translated might have been changed. You will notice a comment line
+ that begins with "#, fuzzy" in front of such a message. msgmerge
+ tool made its best effort to match your old translation with the
+ message from the updated software, but you may find cases that it
+ matched your old translated message to a new msgid and the pairing
+ does not make any sense -- you would need to fix them, and then
+ remove the "#, fuzzy" line from the message (your fixed translation
+ of the message will not be used before you remove the marker).
+
+ - New messages added to the software will have msgstr lines with empty
+ strings. You would need to translate them.
+
+The po/git-gui.pot file is updated by the internationalization
+coordinator from time to time. You _could_ update it yourself, but
+translators are discouraged from doing so because we would want all
+language teams to be working off of the same version of git-gui.pot.
+
+****************************************************************
+
+This section is a note to the internationalization coordinator, and
+translators do not have to worry about it too much.
+
+The message template file po/git-gui.pot needs to be kept up to date
+relative to the software the translations apply to, and it is the
+responsibility of the internationalization coordinator.
+
+When updating po/git-gui.pot file, however, _never_ run "msgmerge -U
+po/xx.po" for individual language translations, unless you are absolutely
+sure that there is no outstanding work on translation for language xx.
+Doing so will create unnecessary merge conflicts and force needless
+re-translation on translators. The translator however may not have access
+to the msgmerge tool, in which case the coordinator may run it for the
+translator as a service.
+
+But mistakes do happen. Suppose a translation was based on an older
+version X, the POT file was updated at version Y and then msgmerge was run
+at version Z for the language, and the translator sent in a patch based on
+version X:
+
+ ? translated
+ /
+ ---X---Y---Z (master)
+
+The coordinator could recover from such a mistake by first applying the
+patch to X, replace the translated file in Z, and then running msgmerge
+again based on the updated POT file and commit the result. The sequence
+would look like this:
+
+ $ git checkout X
+ $ git am -s xx.patch
+ $ git checkout master
+ $ git checkout HEAD@{1} po/xx.po
+ $ msgmerge -U po/xx.po po/git-gui.pot
+ $ git commit -c HEAD@{1} po/xx.po
+
+State in the message that the translated messages are based on a slightly
+older version, and msgmerge was run to incorporate changes to message
+templates from the updated POT file. The result needs to be further
+translated, but at least the messages that were updated by the patch that
+were not changed by the POT update will survive the process and do not
+need to be re-translated.