[GRASS-dev] Re: more translation - manual pages

[Markus Neteler]

Hi Maxim,

(discussion how to translate the manual pages)

On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Maxim Dubinin <sim at gis-lab.info> wrote:
...
> We can simply take all the *.htmls and start translating, but I was
> thinking, that if we know how they are generated automatically,

well... what's happening:

1. compiler does its work and generates binary of a module;
2. module is immediately run in a fake session, it prints the header
  of the man page
 (try:  d.rast --html-description)
  This is done the language to what the computer was set (so, the .po files
  are used if present);
3. the description.html file of the module (English) is attached to that;
4. the now complete man page is moved into the right place.

Missing:
- store translated description.html somewhere
- Makefile should pick the right description.html for a non-english language
  if .po file is present

> we can
> tweak the process to save some work for us, like for example make
> word substitution for repeating phrases or export not in html but in
> rtf etc.

I would suggest to to RFT/whatever format from the resulting manual page.
HTML is for many years the best format to deal with module documentation
in GRASS as it can be edited with an ASCII editor (less so with RTF).
Also "svn diff" works on HTML but not reasonably on RTF. There are
many converters to make an RTF from HTML.

> Finally looked in the source... so each module has a description file,
> from which the html is generated during compilation. Do I understand
> right, that these description files are maintained by the module
> authors and not stored centrally somewhere?

They are stored centrally along with the source code. Maintainers are
the module authors in the first place (if still around) or any other developer
or power user, or our documentation manager (Eric).
...
> --
>  Maxim                          mailto:sim at gis-lab.info

Action item for us:
- understand how to support multi-language manual pages. this is
  a request which is on the plate for years meanwhile... Cannot be so hard!

Markus