[TYPO3-translators] Local Translation Tool for Core and Ext-Devs

[Marcus Schwemer]

Hi,

thanks for all your effort in improving the translation mechanisms for 
TYPO3. The new translation server is really a big step forward!

Some weeks ago I held a short introduction at the Munich TYPO3 Usergroup 
about it. Most questions were around extension development and xliff.

As not every small and not widely used extension should go through the 
translation server, ext devs should be able to provide their own 
translations for a limited amount of languages.

There is a desktop tool "Virtaal" around, but at least under MacOS X 
Lion, it has some drawbacks:

- opening of xlf - files only with the finder
- buttons for a translations status sometimes work, sometimes not
- navigating between translation items could be better
- size of the GUI cannot be changed

So last night I had a look at the xliff standard and some TYPO3 xlf 
files. Since TYPO3 uses only a subset of the XLIFF standard and does not 
support other standards than xliff and its own llxml format, it should 
be possible to provide an own tool for that.

My idea is to provide it as an Firefox - AddOn, since they are platform 
independent and most (all?) devs have one installed. With the "new" 
Jetpack - SDK it is possible to use just HTML(5), CSS and javascript. It 
is no problem to use existing JS-Frameworks like jQuery or ExtJS for that.

A possible roadmap could be:

1) Open a single local xlf-File, edit it and save it

2) Create a new one with all the basic content

3) add translation sources via an api like translate.google.com for 
suggestions

4) Local Projects
4a) a project specifies a root directory, all subsequent directories are 
scanned for xlf-files and added to the project
4b) save those project settings
4c) Specify a "terminology file" for translation hints

<dreaming>
5) Direct Access to a Pootle-Server with authentication etc ... (no 
webinterface required)
</dreaming>

Could this be a way to go? Is it too much effort?

What do you think?

Kind regards,
Marcus Schwemer