shidel
Question: translator.
Sorry, this is not an issue, just a question (because there is no discussion).
I want to ask. Is the translator for this project still open?
Hey sukalaper,
This project is very much open and alive so feel free to send translations :) It's just that right now, Jerome, the owner of the project needs to take some time for himself, so merging pull requests may be delayed a bit. Also, may I ask in what language you'd like to translate?
If you have questions (format, encoding and so on), I'd be happy to do my best to help out.
Hey sukalaper,
This project is very much open and alive so feel free to send translations :) It's just that right now, Jerome, the owner of the project needs to take some time for himself, so merging pull requests may be delayed a bit. Also, may I ask in what language you'd like to translate?
If you have questions (format, encoding and so on), I'd be happy to do my best to help out.
Hello!
Happy for your reply. Actually, I'm also currently understanding the directory structure of this project (to be honest, I'm a bit confused about where to put the translation files. Please don't be offended. Since Jerome is also busy, maybe this can give me additional time to better understand the structure so that I can minimize or even did nothing wrong at all).
I will translate Indonesian language (ind) according to ISO 639-1.
Glad for your offer. Thanks for that.
First, very few DOS programs support UTF-8 encoding and nearly all require Code Page based ASCII text files. So, the provided translations need to be submitted in the proper Code Page for the language to prevent possible errors in conversion. Those files may also be provided in UTF-8 format which is easier for translators and "modern" editors to handle. It is possible that someday only UTF-8 files will be needed and preferred. But at present, those are optional and only the Code Page versions are required.
Generally, with a couple exceptions (I'll get to those later on), each top level directory is a specific program that supports language translations.
Programs that support the normal NLS system used by most often in FreeDOS usually have 2 sub-directories called HELP and NLS. The files under HELP contain the information displayed by that program when help is requested with the "/?" command line switch. The files under NLS are the translations used by the program at Runtime.
The programs with NLS files are fully supported by the analysis tools for this project. And the current state of their translations can be viewed on the report page at https://shidel.github.io/fd-nls/report.html. The HELP files do not have any discernible structure and always need to be visually inspected.
Programs that do not support the normal NLS translations are generally not supported the the report analysis utility.
Some programs have translations built-in to their executable. They general have a SOURCES directory under their project directory.
A few other programs are very different. For example, the FreeDOS installer (FDI) has other information like keyboard mapping, fonts and batch sequences that get used to configure the system based on the users language preferences at installation.
There are a few "housekeeping" directories like .github/workflows and zzz-notes-and-misc-items.
Then there is the packages directory. It contains translation information used to generate metadata for the different packages. That data gets used by programs like FDIMPLES and PKGTOOLS to provide information regarding the different packages. It can be painful to work directly on the large CSV files used to store that information.
However, I while back I was working on the FD-NLS Desktop App to make translating stuff for FreeDOS easier. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to work on it in a long while. But, I did manage to get the first phase of that program operational. That phase was to deal with the package data translations. The current version of that application supports x86 processors and is available for Mac, Linux and Windows on my server at https://up.lod.bz.
One of the nice things about the FD-NLS Desktop App is it's Live Preview. While translating the package information, it will simulate how that information would look in FDIMPLES.
Using the App is not too bad. You check out this repository. Then in the App point it at your local copy. Since there is no configuration for Indonesia at present, you would need to setup configuration information for that language and possibly provide a font. It will store that information in the local repository copy under the fd-nls directory. That way others can use the language configuration information.
Once those are done, using the App to translate the package information is fairly straight forward. And when you are satisfied with the work you have done, you would use Git to commit your changes.
Someday, I would like to get back to working on the App and have it support the various types of translations for the individual programs plus fully integrate git support. Unfortunately with all the stuff I need to do, that won't be anytime soon.
