[Koha-devel] QA: Language material in install/mysql/data

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 1:04 AM, Marcel de Rooy
<M.de.Rooy at rijksmuseum.nl> wrote:
> A good improvement recently was the approach for systempreferences. They are
> inserted with the general sysprefs.sql in the root folder, and optionally
> updated by a translation in the language folder. So the pref comes always
> in, translation depending on others. (I think we should extend that approach
> to the other files now: insert in English, only update translatable things
> in the other languages. Example: only update name, title and content for a
> notice, only liblibrarian and libopac for frameworks, etc. )

I think this is a good idea.  With some more work, there's also no
reason why the text couldn't be extracted into .pot files for exposure
to the normal translation tools.

> For some folders there are already 'informal' maintainers. Couldn't we just
> formalize that someone can step forward to maintain such a folder and let
> devs just propose changes to the general files and/or the en-folder ?

Sure, if folks are willing to step up and take on responsibility for a
localization.  Eventually, however, all such strings ought to be
handled by the existing translation framework.  Once support for that
is in place, the main purpose for language-specific SQL scripts would
be setting localization-dependent configuration defaults (e.g., like
the fr-FR unimarc_standard_system_preferences.sql).

One thing that I think we should ensure, however, is that if we adopt
this idea, that correct functioning of Koha should not depend on any
action by localization maintainers.  In other words, regardless of
which language you pick during installation, one should always have a
functioning system that includes the necessary default values.  One
way to do that might be to move the globally mandatory bits of
installer/data/mysql/en/mandatory into a new
installer/data/mysql/global/mandatory directory that always gets run
during installation.

Regards,

Galen
--
Galen Charlton
Manager of Implementation
Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366
skype:  gmcharlt
web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
http://evergreen-ils.org