[PD] help patch translations

[Jonathan Wilkes]

Oh, and a general question:

Is there any sensible way to translate creator names and/or method names?

If I were trying to use software translated from another language, I'd 
definitely want that feature.  It seems like that would theoretically be 
possible, but I haven't thought about it in any detail.

-Jonathan


On 04/29/2015 06:41 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
> Hi Miller,
> I've got a fairly fleshed out idea for how to do internationalized 
> help patches in Pd.
>
> It would be nice to store the translations as files containing FUDI 
> messages, like this:
>
> description something something;
> outlet_0 float translated description of what a float arriving at the 
> 0th inlet does;
> outlet_0 list etc...;
> demo-slider label foo;
> demo-bang label bar;
>
> The benefit is that one could actually parse the translation data 
> using Pd itself.  Here, the description and outlet data could be 
> forwarded to the gui (to format in a footer that reflows with the 
> width of the window).  Additionally, the "demo" slider and bang could 
> be sent to iemgui receives to get a translated label. (Perhaps 
> prepending a "$0-" to guard against nameclashes in other open patch 
> windows.)
>
> The problem of course is that FUDI is too brittle for arbitrary text.  
> It's too easy to lose data, and too difficult to try to remember all 
> the ways in which numbers, commas, semis, decimals, dollarsigns, and 
> "dropped" keycodes can result in a data loss. Not impossible to work 
> around, but burdensome for doc writers trying to concentrate on 
> translating explanatory text.
>
> Is there any way to read or write FUDI-- perhaps with [text]-- and 
> tell the parser to interpret everything after the nth atom as a single 
> symbol?
>
> If not, I can just store the translation data as JSON (which I'm 
> already doing for the gui interfaction translations).  In that case 
> I'd just read the translations from the GUI side, and forward any 
> iemgui label messages on to Pd.
>
> -Jonathan