Oolite Bulletins

Hello commanders,

I would like to translate Oolite in French but:

1. I do not know if there is already someone doing the job. Should I help instead of translating?

2. I do not know where to start. Which and where are the files with text?

3. I cannot evaluate the amount of job. Could a previous localizer give me an estimation?

4. Side questions:
- Is there a length of text limitation? French is generally around 15%
longer than English.
- Are the diacritical signs ("à", "é" and so on) able to appear on Oolite?

Thanks a lot

Poovga
Rated Deadly since yesterday

I start with 2) because I have no idea if anyone else is working on a French version. So, the files you need to touch are descriptions.plist, hud.plist, hud-small.plist, equipment.plist, missiontext.plist and shipdata.plist, all found in the Config folder. I fully recommend you download any of the previously created translations (Italian, Russian and German) and see how they have made it work.

3) Depends on how much time you intend to dedicate to the task. Most of the work can normally be done within a couple of days, until you reach the planet descriptions part. For that, be prepared for long and hard work.

4) No text limitation. 15% extra length should be OK. Remember that too long texts, although accepted, might overflow some screens, like the shipyard descriptions or the contract info, so test, test and when you are done test some more.

4bis) Yes, all extended latin characters are supported with the default Oolite font file.

Hope this helps.

another_commander wrote:

4bis) Yes, all extended latin characters are supported with the default Oolite font file.

Nuh-huh. There are far more “extended latin” characters than what’s in Windows-Latin-1. Unicode has almost one hundred variations of the letter A alone.

The default font file should be enough for French, though. :-)

Thanks Ahruman and Another,


Sounds great! Radar is clear ahead!
Now, all I have to do is doing it
I hope to have news coming soon.

Thanks,
Poovga

There’s a long thread on localization here. The second half of this post describes the in-built tool to help with the most difficult part, the system_description array.

Hello,

Just a quick update on the French localisation.
After some problems -bugs were in front of the screen!- I began my tests today.
Globally, I did a dirtier job than expected but it can only improve after the first glance

Have a good day, Commanders!
Pierre-Olivier

Bonne chance!

Hello,

I made several changes to my files and put them back in Oolite.

It does not run:
There is a black screen for a couple of seconds and then the window is closing down.

I tried with and without holding the Shift key.
The file "requires" from the Italian version is also in the Resources directory.
I reinstalled the 1.72.2 from BerliOS with no effect.

Have anybody an idea?

Thanks a lot,
Pierre-Olivier (poovga)

We will need to see Latest.log. It will be in oolite.app\Logs

My latest log is here.

http://www.teradepot.com/fbomy5rpcg88/Latest.log.html

Seems that there are a lot of problems

Thanks

Thanks for make me looking the LatestLog
I eventually fixed 2 pb on descriptions.plist and I can see the welcome screen on Oolite.

Thanks

Hello,

I have problems with accents (à, é and so on) on equipment.plist and shipdata.plis

1. Shipdata
Latest log shows:
Parse failed at line 23 (char 600) - invalid utf8 data while parsing quoted string
The line 23 is the translation of Adder:
name = "Vipère";

2. equipment
The equipments containing an accent either in their name are not appearing on the lists, either Ship's equipment or Available equipment. None of the descriptions are appearing (accents are frequent in French).

Latest log shows:
[plist.parse.foundation.failed]: Failed to parse oolite.app/Resources/Config/equipment.plist as a property list using Foundation. Retrying using homebrew parser. WARNING: the homebrew parser is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Oolite.
failed to parse as valid XML matching DTD
[plist.homebrew.parseError]: Property list isn't in XML format, homebrew parser can't help you.
[gnustep]: 2009-07-09 01:05:04.957 oolite[42136] could not convert to UTF8 string! bytes=044bc0f2 len=72 (and more others like this one...)

First line of equipment:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

3. Update on the rest
- Descriptions.plist works well
- As soon as these accents pb would be resolved, I will get into "Planet description". I already did half of the job by using only masculine names and adjectives. I have some ideas for fine tuning but I would like to have the main screens going on before.

Thanks for help (as you can understand, I am not a dev!)

Poovga

You need to make sure that your equipment.plist and shipdata.plist are UTF-8 format. Simple DOS or UNIX text will not cut it. I had the same problem with shipnames not being displayed because the shipdata.plist would fail to load, until I converted the lists to UTF-8. To do this you need a text editor with text conversion capabilities, like UltraEdit32. Others like Notepad++ might work too, but I am not sure.

By using the UTF-8 text format for shipdata.plist, I can display "Vipère" without problems on screen.

Sorry for the Italian/French mix, I just want to illustrate the point.

Similar conversion is required for equipment.plist and then everything should work as expected. If you have any difficulties with it, let me know and I will convert the files for you.

Hello Commanders,

The French translation is DONE
I cheated a bit with the planet descriptions by using only masculin and singular nouns and some other tricks. It is sometimes a bit strange but it sounds French and keeps the surrealistic flavour.
I go on testing to chase down the last spelling mistakes.

- How do you understand Corporate Sate?
- Is there a way to start the basic missions (Constrictor, nova and trumbles)? It might be long to test them with a new commander...

Thanks to Another_commander for his debugging helping hand

Poovga

A Corporate State is, as I understand it, a society run like, and by, a commercial company or network of companies. Political power is held in the hands of company executives. Law is based around company rules and policy. Sometimes this will be simple feral capitalism, essentially a plutocracy where the rich do as they please and all things can be had for money. Some Corporate States, like some corporations, may be more enlightened, with a vastly more humane approach to their citizens/staff, and might be a lot more meritocratic. But in all cases the main function of the state is financial and mercantile.