[Accessibility] About the Lorodux project

[Lex]

  Hi Lulu-Ann,

17.09.2010 9:32, Lulu-Ann at gmx.de пишет:
> You are not well informed.
> OpenStreetMap data is in English anyways, so we are only talking about some menu labels and error messages, probably less words to translate than this email contains.
> The order in which languages are added is totally irrelevant.
> English will be second, that is also clear.
>
The amount of messages that program needs to print will only increase 
over time. Look how many strings to translate loadstone-GPS has. Menu, 
settings, dialogs (such as do you want to save this point locally or 
also push it to the open street map?) and so on. If, as you said, German 
language is the first, this mean that all interface messages will be in 
German in the code. If somebody comes to the project without German 
knowledge and wants to add, say, some new function which requires a new 
menu item, how this person can write a name for a menu item if he/she 
doesn't know German, and German is the language, in which strings are 
written initially in the program source? If he/she write the name in 
English, then there will be a mix of German and English strings, and it 
will be impossible to make a translation.
For easier understanding, I'll describe briefly how translation is 
managed in projects that I know of, especially NVDA 
(http://www.nvda-project.org) - a free and open-source screen reader for 
Windows and Loadstone (http://www.loadstone-gps.com) - a navigation 
software for visually impaired (symbian). Though both projects are 
developed for very different platforms, the internationalization 
processes are quite similar.
When writing code, programmers mark each string literal in English that 
needs to be localized in special way. There are tools which can extract 
specially marked strings and present them in friendly interface for 
translators. Translators translate from English to their native language 
and send language files back to the developers for inclusion. So there 
are language files for each language, language files are generated 
automatically from source and filled by translators. Language file 
contains actual strings (in English) and their appropriate equivalent in 
target language.
If you decide to adopt such or similar system for LoroDux, then actual 
strings must be in one strictly defined language. If it will be German, 
then only German programmers will be able to write the code, which 
communicates with user.

Lex