Dear translator! This readme describes what has to be done to translate and maintain a catalog for MakeCD. Every translator will get a free MakeCD Private version and will of course be named in the credits. Translation of the manual hasn't started yet and will be coordinated by Angela Schmidt. I (Patrick Ohly) am responsible for the catalog. Please contact me at patrick@core.de if you want to do a certain language. I can tell you if we still need a translator for it and give you the necessary files. Please tell me also if I may send you changed strings for translation in the future automatically. For obvious reasons I'd prefer people who are able to maintain a language in the future, although others are welcome, too ;-) I decided not to use .ct files. Instead, all catalogs are compiled from the same source file with a custom catalog compiler ("MakeCatCLI"). This has several advantages. If I change or add a string I can do it in all languages simultaneously. If I cannot change a foreign language I can mark a string as changed and leave translating it to others. You can read both the original English and German version of a string when translating or any other already available language. The drawback are increased costs for coordination and merging of the different languages. You can make this a lot easier by following these rules: - Don't change lines in the source file that belong to other languages. - Don't use an editor which would replace TABs with spaces or changes the text automatically in any other way. - If you think that a string should be changed in another language, don't do it the source file. Collect these remarks in another file and sent them to me seperately. I'll do these changes, if I agree. - Submit only fully translated and final versions of your translation (as far as something can be "final" at all ;-) The source file "GUI_Locale.h" is a simple C header file and uses C style character escapes within strings (\n, \t, \", etc.) and string merging. The file itself includes more remarks about the strings and a history of changes. Strings that have been changed or need to be translated are marked with "@@" at the beginning. MakeCD will ignore such strings and use the English default instead. A few things should be regarded to deliver a good catalog: - Test your catalog with a PAL screen with 640x256 pixels and topaz.8. All windows have to open on such a screen. A screen on a graphic card with the same size is not sufficient, because the different pixel ratio actually makes a difference. We decided to make it possible to use MakeCD even on older Amigas and there are really some people who could not use MakeCD otherwise (not the least of them Angela herself - she connects the CD writers to a secondary Amiga with a 1081). Some strings might not be used in the last public release yet. I'll send you beta versions of MakeCD itself only if it is really necessary. Thanks for your understanding! - Pay attention to the key shortcuts in the gadget texts. No key should be used twice. - Please try to use the same text layout as in the other language entries. It really helps maintaining the file. You can add your name to the about requester text (ALL_TXT_ABOUT) if you like to. Creating your catalog is done with MakeCat[CLI]: "MakeCatCLI Catalogs/deutsch/MakeCD.catalog D GUI_Locale.h" for the German catalog. The "D" is the identifier used in the GUI_Locale.h for the German strings. This is a list of identifiers for other languages: DK - dansk E - español F - français I - italiano N - norsk NL - nederlands P - português S - svenska Other identifiers can be introduced for other languages, too. That's it :-) If you have further questions after reading this file and looking at GUI_Locale.h, please ask me... Best regards, Patrick Ohly