[josm-dev] JOSM Translations

[Marcin Floryan]

Hi!

Recently someone on the list asked why JOSM is localised using plugins.
Since I work on JOSM translation a bit myself it made me think about
this particular approach and it seems like there might be some problems
with the current approach.

First and foremost the current approach effectively make it impossible
to release JOSM with complete and stable translation since there is no
relation between the JOSM code source code and the language plugins.
Potentially there could be JOSM bundle with the lang-* plugins included
but it would still not be accurate. On the other hand, if the lang-*
plugins get tied with JOSM core then creating translations for plugins
becomes questionable. And finally I recently noticed that OpenStreetBugs
plugin decided to take its own localisation approach - by including the
translation with the plugin itself.

Perhaps this is a good moment to consider whether some refactoring of
translations could be carried out to tidy things up.

I wonder what would people think about:
* Migrating JOSM core translations to JOSM core and out of the plugin so
  the core can be localised consistently and released with good
  translations. This would also eliminate problem with some messages
  that are currently non-translatable (before plugin is loaded)
  Perhaps launchpad could be use to maintain translations and then
  someone could maintain periodically updating the core.
* Keeping the lang-* plugins to hold translations for plugins that
  change more often. 

Just a thought.

Regards,
M.
--
Marcin Floryan
http://marcin.floryan.pl/ [GPG Key ID: 0D5581C5]
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