String Freeze for 0.8

[yobbo]

Hi all!

After the latest updates to the .pot file are pushed, we’ll be entering string freeze. That means the only updates to the translation files before 0.8 will be to add strings that we missed. None of the english strings should change otherwise. This weekend will be full of bugfixes, and after that we should hopefully be releasing version 0.8.

What we really need this weekend is testing feedback. I’ve tried playing the game in both Chinese and Russian and it’s looking good! I noticed a couple strings that still hadn’t been marked for translation, and I fixed those, but I’m sure there are still more. So anyone who can get the game running with the translations, please post your feedback on anything that’s coming up in english, but doesn’t seem to be in the translation files.

If you don’t know how to get the game running with the translations, post here and hopefully we can work it out. I’m only familiar with doing it on Linux, but it should be possible to download the translations from launchpad in “.mo file” format, and then just put them in the correct place and it will hopefully work.

If you’re on linux, and compiling from source, you can run “lang/compile_mo.sh” and it will compile all the languages. That should be enough to test yours.

Otherwise, or if you want to use the translations from launchpad, you will need to move the relevant .mo file to “lang/mo/<your_language_id>/LC_MESSAGES/cataclysm-dda.mo”, where <your_language_id> is the same as that of the .po file in lang/po. So for example “lang/mo/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/cataclysm-dda.mo” for Chinese (Simplified), and “lang/mo/ru/LC_MESSAGES/cataclysm-dda.mo” for Russian.

If that doesn’t work, let me know. Actually if it does work, let me know, too :).

[LazyCat-rus]

Good news.

After the latest updates to the .pot file are pushed, we'll be entering string freeze.

I didn't find of any update of .pot file.

What we really need this weekend is testing feedback. I've tried playing the game in both Chinese and Russian and it's looking good!

It's(Russian) looking good for foreign, but for Russian it's looking average. It's still not ready. It's problem of source code strings, not translators. Some strings we can't be properly translated. We need at least terrain type strings in .pot file. I see you push our .po file to upsteam, so now we need to push our LP updates to upsteam. I will do it once per week. --- When 0.8 will be released?

[GlyphGryph]

It doesn’t need to be perfect for 0.8 - just very usable, and stable. There’s still quite a bit of work to be done on multiple fronts before version 1.0, and translations will continue to be refined moving forward I’m sure.

[yobbo]

.pot update only just got pushed, sorry. Yeah I added in the terrain strings, so they should be available for translating when the .pot update carries over to Launchpad.

The official 0.8 version should be after this weekend. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll do the releases for the translated versions, but I imagine that whenever the translation is deemed ready, someone can package the .mo files with the usual build, and release it as a localized one.

If it turns out that there are still untranslatable strings in 0.8, then it’ll be branched and the new strings added to it (along with any major bugfixes if necessary) for an 0.8.1.

That would be good to get the .po files pushed to git regularly. I made the “lang/merge_po.sh” script which automatically merges translations from “lang/incoming” (more instructions in “code_doc/TRANSLATING.md”) but it requires the gettext tools (and maybe linux? not sure).

After 0.8 i’ll be cleaning up the strings a lot and hopefully making a lot of the really awkward ones easier to translate. For 0.8 though, “ugly but works” is the goal.

[LazyCat-rus]

Good.