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Translating OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org uses its own system for translation called GSI files. These are
one large text file with all the languages designated by their country dialing
code. The file is tab separated and not really usable on it own.
Using dialing codes is a stupid idea but this is set to change in version 2.0
when the project will begin using ISO language codes.
The translate.org.za project uses the oo2po tool from its translate toolkit to
convert the GSI file into more useful PO files.
Useful Resources
* Stats
http://ooo.ximian.com/l10n/HEAD.html
* Maintainers Page
http://l10n.openoffice.org/localization_responsibilities.html
* Supported Languages page
http://l10n.openoffice.org/languages.html
* QA status page
http://qa.openoffice.org/localized/status.html
Starting a new language
Be sure to ask on the mailing list, perhaps others are already at work. Then
send Pavel Janik the information required for: http://l10n.openoffice.org/languages.html
Converting OO to PO
1) Get the en_US GSI file (or an existing GSI file for your language):
Without generating it yourself - which requires the
source code of OpenOffice.org the best bet is to download it from:
http://ooomisc.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/ooomisc/POT/
or
ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/localization/OpenOffice.org/devel/POT/
This will contain the latest development POT files.
TODO: Creating your own GSI from sources.
2) Optional: Convert to PO format
This step takes the downloaded GSI file and converts it into PO Template files
Rwhich can be translated using a PO editor. You do not need to perfom this step is you downloaded
the POT files.
mkdir [POT dir]
oo2po -P [GSI file] [POT dir]
Where [GSI File] is the GSI file that you downloaded and [POT Dir] will contain the new POT files.
The -P option will create .pot files instead of .po files.
(Note: the GSI file must have the extension .gsi or .txt or .sdf. If you do not create the output
directory then the output will be to one large .po/.pot file)
2a) Converting an existing translated GSI file to PO
In addition to the en_US GSI file in 1) also download the GSI file contains you
language. Firstly simply combine the two GSI files.
cat GSI-en_US GSI-your-lang > GSI-combined
Then extract your translations into a correctly formated PO file:
oo2po -l 1,NN [Combined GSI file] [PO Dir]
NN - is the language number for your language, this should be column 10 of the
tab delimited GSI file. e.g. English US is 1, Afrikaans is 27, etc. (quickly
lookup your number here: http://l10n.openoffice.org/languages.html)
[Combined GSI File] is the file that you created by joining en-US to your
language
[PO Dir] will contain PO files with both the English and your translated
strings.
Converting PO to OO/GSI
To merge them back, use a command as follows:
po2oo -l 27 -i po-translations/ -o oo-newtranslations.gsi -t oo-originaltranslations.gsi
where 27 is the language number for 1.x or the language code (af) for 2.x,
po-translations is the directory of the po files, and oo-originaltranslations.gsi is the
original oo-file.gsi then you will have the new GSI file in oo-newtranslations.gsi
* CHecking the generated GSI file
You can use the gsicheck tool (looks like its part of the OOo source package) to
check you generated GSI file.
gsicheck -c -l "" myfile.sdf
Building the software
Pavel JanÃk provides build facilities for those who ask nicely :)
This is what he says about getting your language built:
> What is the best way to go about it? (cosidering tha it would be really
> hard for us to get a Windows build going in Cambodia)
just prepare patches for my build system, send them to me, send me the URL
for you your GSI, update my script
ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/localization/OpenOffice.org/devel/build/Files/2.0/update_gsi_files
To match the URL and send me all this and wait :-)
> Does the GSI file need to be exact fo the given build or the m65 file
> is good enough for m71 (and some messages might not be translated)?
It is good enough, but why not update to the latest POTs? It is so easy...
Locale Files
You need a locale file for things to work correctly here is what you need to do:
> There's no RW locale in the list for locales in the tools->options...
> What do I have to do
> to make the RW locale available in the installed end-product?
Submit an issue of type ENHANCEMENT and attach a valid locale data file,
as lined out in
http://l10n.openoffice.org/i18n_framework/LocaleData.html
and i18npool/source/localedata/data/locale.dtd