$Id: README,v 1.6 2006/06/18 12:42:31 joern Exp $

Notes for translators
=====================

This document describes briefly the steps for adding a new
translation to dvd::rip and maintaining this translation in
case of software updates.

1. Install required packages
----------------------------

* Package       gettext              >= 0.13
* Perl Module   Locale::TextDomain   >= 1.10
* Program       inkscape             (for splash screen)

Locale::TextDomain is packaged as libintl-perl in Debian
(and probably also in other Linux distributions).


2. Add a new translation
------------------------

- Open the PACKAGE file in a text editor and add your language
  code to the LINGUAS variable.

- Copy the file 'video.dvdrip.pot' to 'LANGCODE.po', e.g. for french
  this would be this command:
  
  % cp video.dvdrip.pot fr.po

- Now edit your .po file using an UTF-8 aware text editor or a
  .po file editor like gtranslator, emacs, kbabel or something else.

- Run 'make install' to build/rebuild all messages databases and
  install them in dvd::rip's library path

- Start dvd::rip from the source directory to test your translation.
  If you don't have LC_MESSAGES set to your language code, you need
  to do this now or set it temporarily for each dvdrip call like this:
  
  % LC_MESSAGES=fr_FR ./dvdrip


3. Maintaining a translation
----------------------------

In case of software updates, messages could have been changed, deleted
or added. So you need to keep your translation up-to-date.

- run 'make update-po' to extract new, changed or deleted messages
  from the dvd::rip source code. This updates all .po files
  correspondently.

- edit your .po file. At this point a .po aware editor like gtranslator
  saves you a lot of work, because it shows you which messages are
  new resp. changed.

- as explained above a 'make install' will rebuild all messages
  catalogs and you're done.


4. Splash screen
----------------

dvd::rip has a splash screen showing at startup. It's a .png file
generated from an Inkscape .svg drawing. To add a splash screen
for your language, just copy the english version, launch inkscape
and translate the text parts. "make install" converts the .svg
file to .png and installs it into the right place:

  % cp splash.en.svg splash.fr.svg
  % inkscape splash.fr.po
  % make install

The dvd::rip version number is replaced during the installation
process, so keep the "DVDRIP-VERSION" placeholder unchanged.


Credits
-------

* The whole l10n framework is based on Guido Flohr's Perl module
  Locale::TextDomain. When I began adding l10n support to dvd::rip
  I was wondering about all this gettext stuff, which wasn't really
  Perlish and I thought about implementing my own small framework.
  But luckily enough I found this module well timed and I was surprised
  how easy l10n can be ;)

* The current layout of the splash screen is a contribution of
  Christophe Combelles. He replaced the swanky "A full featured
  DVD ripper" by this nice ->CD drawing ;)
