Re: [docbook-apps] Translation/i18n of DocBook/XML?

[Jordi Vilalta <jvprat@wanadoo.es>]

Hi

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Michael Wiedmann wrote:

> [ Posting in behalf of Wolfgang Borgert <debacle@debian.org> who has
>   problems posting to the list ]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> what is the ultimative way to translate DocBook/XML
> documents into other languages?  I know that there were some
> discussions two years ago, but I don't know the outcome.  Does
> anybody know the following tools?

I'm also interested in this topic.

> 
> - doc-i18n-tool(?)
> 
> - intltool
> 
> - poxml/xml2pot
> 

I haven't tried those, it could be nice if somebody else could report 
their state.

There's another application called po4a (po for all) developed to do it 
with a modular design. It has some modules that deal with pod (perl 
documentation), debiandoc, sgml docbook and some others.

The docbook module isn't very usable now, but somebody could enhance it, 
it could become a very useful tool.

Its homepage is at http://alioth.debian.org/projects/po4a/ and you can 
download it from the CVS.

> What I like to have is something gettextish:
> 
> DocBook/XML(en) -> .pot
> 
> and
> DocBook/XML(en) + {de,fr,es}.po -> DocBook/XML(de/fr/es)
> 
> Or similar...  I would like to avoid the use of autoconf, KDE,
> or any huge toolchain, if that's possible.

It's written in perl, so you don't need having a graphical interface 
installed.

po4a includes the following utils:

po4a-gettextize:
  DocBook(en) -> .pot
  DocBook(en) + DocBook(de/fr/es) -> {de,fr,es}.po

po4a-translate:
  DocBook(en) + {de,fr,es}.po -> DocBook(de/fr/es)

po4a-updatepo:
  DocBook(en) + old {de,fr,es}.po -> updated {de,fr,es}.po

As you can see, it eases the initial translation and the future updates of 
the document. But as I said, the DocBook module is far from complete. It 
doesn't deal well with entities, and with included files. Someone interested
in helping? :)

Regards,

Jordi Vilalta