Re: [docbook-apps] Preserving entities and language translation

[Richard Hamilton <dick@rlhamilton.net>]

Hi Warren,

I'm not sure if I can come up with a standard, or truly elegant way of doing this, but here are a few possibilities:

1) If the only entities in your files are the ones that shouldn't be translated, just don't have xmllint resolve the entities when you normalize the file, then use it again to expand entities when you get the translated files back. Of course, this option won't work if you have other entities that contain content you need to translate.

2) Place the large blocks in files that would be included using xinclude. You could then translate the file before resolving the inclusions. Of course, this one doesn't work if you have other xincludes that contain content you need to translate.

3) Create a simple XSL stylesheet or script (Perl, PHP, ...) that would convert the code as you have shown below, leaving everything else as is, then another script that converts the translated file back. You could then run xmllint to resolve those entities. This is a five-step process:

  - Run the first script to transform the translate on/off processing instructions into non-entities.
  - Run xmllint to normalize everything else
  - Translate
  - Run the second script on the translated file to restore the entities inside the translate instructions
  - Run xmllint to resolve those entities. 

I hope that helps.

Best regards,
Dick Hamilton
-------
XML Press
XML for Technical Communicators
http://xmlpress.net
hamilton@xmlpress.net



On Jan 18, 2016, at 20:42, Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> wrote:

> Some of the articles in the FreeBSD documentation use entities to include large blocks of data.  For example, one article is just a very large list of PGP keys for developers: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pgpkeys/index.html
> 
> The DocBook article.xml is only 2K, because it does things like this:
> 
>  <sect1 xml:id="pgpkeys-officers">
>    <title>Officers</title>
> 
>    &section.pgpkeys-officers;
>  </sect1>
> 
> We use xmllint to normalize the article into a single XML file for use with PO translation tools.  Of course, all entities are expanded into text at that point.
> 
> It would be really nice to mark that particular entity as one that should be preserved in the translated file.  Is it possible to do that with processing instructions or some other method?  For example:
> 
>  <sect1 xml:id="pgpkeys-officers">
>    <title>Officers</title>
> 
>    <?translate off?>
>    &section.pgpkeys-officers;
>    <?translate on?>
>  </sect1>
> 
> In the normalized file, it could be a string to indicate to translators that it should be left alone:
> 
>  <sect1 xml:id="pgpkeys-officers">
>    <title>Officers</title>
> 
>    <?translate off?>
>    do not translate: section.pgpkeys-officers
>    <?translate on?>
>  </sect1>
> 
> Of course, it has to be changed back when the translated XML file is generated.
> 
> Is there a standard or elegant way to do this?
> 
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