[Menai-LUG] Kyfieithu and Kartouche

[Kevin Donnelly]

As you know, one of the key benefits of free/open-source software is the 
possibility of localising it.  For a few months we have been trying to carry 
on the good work started by Elfed Lewis in translating KDE into Welsh.  

The Kyfieithu site has now been set up as a clearing house for the KDE 
translation project, and uses a lightweight bilingual portal of our own 
devising (which is also running on menaiLUG, and, like Kartouche (see below), 
will be available for download shortly).  It is not really "live" yet, but 
(if all goes well!) will be so on 1 March, because on that date, as you can 
see, we are planning a "translation campaign" - Kyfieithu mewn Kant, or K/100 
- which will not only expand the number of translators (we hope!), but will 
also raise awareness of GNU/Linux and KDE in Wales.  If you have any comments 
or suggestions about this, I would also be glad to receive them - also any 
contact addresses.  The more "opinion-shapers" we can alert to this, the 
better.  Brief "backgrounder" notes on various subjects (eg OOo, KDE, Gnome, 
Linux, etc) would also save me having to write them all myself :-)

While working on this, we began to think that it would be nice if we could use 
the Web to give other people an easy way to provide input into the process.  
There are many advantages to this, and after some work we have put together 
an application (Kartouche) that seems to meet most of the initial 
requirements.  

Kartouche uses PHP to load the pot (translation template) files into a MySQL 
database (one file to a table), and then provides a front-end for people to 
add suggested translations, and a back-end for the translation co-ordinator 
to accept or reject those suggestions.  More information is at:
http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk/kartouche/aboutkart/index.php

The Kartouche user interface is at 
http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk/kartouche/index.php.  Suggested translations can 
be offered by using the "Start translating" link.  The files (tables) 
available for translation are the ones suggested as essential for 
a Welsh KDE version - the planned translation campaign would start with those 
(around 4,200 strings out of the total of about 57,800), and as those get 
finished, then add the others progressively. 

We are working to get the files and installation notes packaged as a 
downloadable, and this should be ready by the weekend.  Once that is 
available, it should be possible for more people to test it in the comfort of 
their own PCs.

Best wishes

Kevin Donnelly