CFT: PO/Gettext Translation System for FreeBSD DocBook Documents

[Warren Block]

For the last couple of years, there has been an effort to modernize the
way that translations of FreeBSD documentation are produced.  The manual
methods that have been used for decades are too labor-intensive to keep
up with the rate of change of the documentation.

These new changes make use of the standard PO/Gettext translation used
by many other open-source projects.  Translators only need to translate
strings, not try to track upstream changes.  While some knowledge of
DocBook will be helpful, being able to write full DocBook documents is
not required.

At this point, we need wider testing and feedback.

We know this has been a long time coming, and we appreciate your
patience and help.  Thank you!


Installation
------------

The documentation build system has been updated, and is included when
the documentation tree is checked out.

Version 2.0_5 of the textproc/docproj port has been updated to include
the basic PO translation tools.  If the port is already installed, turn
on the TRANSLATOR option and reinstall it:
   # cd /usr/ports/textproc/docproj
   # make config
   (enable TRANSLATOR)
   # make reinstall clean

A preliminary version of a new PO Translations chapter for the FDP
Primer starts here:
   http://wonkity.com/~wblock/tmp/translation/po-translations.html

Proceed through the multiple sections by clicking "Next" at the upper or
lower right.

The Quick Start section has a quick overview of the whole process.  For
testing, we recommend translating the Leap Seconds article shown there.
It is short and provides a reasonable overview of the process.

We recommend not putting a lot of effort into translating larger 
documents until the tools and process have had more testing.

More detail is provided in the later sections, including examples in the
Creating New Translations section.


Feedback and Assistance
-----------------------

The mailing list for FreeBSD translators is at
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-translators

Thanks!