xkeyboard-config should use a standard mechanism for handling translations, not a custom xml format

Thank you for your bug. Could you make a screenshot of the dialog showing the non translated options? What locale do you use exactly?

I use "cs_CZ.UTF-8" locale, and I attached a picture of System → Options → Keyboard (picture from Ubuntu 6.10, but it's the same as 7.04). All the strings are translated in xkeyboard-config package, but only a few of them are actually translated on the picture (only those strings available in forementioned xml files).

The /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml has no translation to your locale for those options, is your bug about xkeyboard-config not using rosetta?

Oh yes it does have. Look at attached picture, "Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu" is one of few translated strings. Now look:

$ rgrep "Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu" /usr/share/locale-langpack/cs/
Binary file /usr/share/locale-langpack/cs/LC_MESSAGES/xkeyboard-config.mo matches

$ rgrep "Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu" /usr/share/X11/
/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml: <description xml:lang="cs">Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu</description>
/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.xml: <description xml:lang="cs">Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu</description>
/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.xml: <description xml:lang="cs">Dodatečné volby pro kompatibilitu</description>

You see? Those xml files (from fresh Ubuntu 7.04) have some translated string for the "cs" language, as well as xkeyboard-config.mo file. The problem is, translated strings are taken from xml files (and not from xkeyboard-config file) AND those xml files cannot be translated in rosetta.

As I said, I suppose the bug is, that gnome-keyboard-properties uses those xml for translation and not xkeyboard-config.mo, where are *exactly the same* strings (and we have them *all* translated via rosetta). If it is correct for gnome-keyboard-properties to use those xml files, what is then xkeyboard-config.mo good for? And how can we (in Ubuntu) translate gnome-keyboard-properties?

This is bugging me too for some time, and I think there is a solution. The problem is, that xkeyboard-config has all its translated strings in xml files, which are generated at compile time. The only thing to do would be to automagically export all existing translations from rosetta, putting them in the po dir, then compiling the package. And of course the mo file should be removed from language packs, it's not used anyway. Simple enough, isn't it?
Any thoughts?

Hi kamil.paral,

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? (ISOs are available from cdimage.ubuntu.com)

If it remains an issue, could you also attach a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
Thanks in advance.

The output of lspci -vvnn would also be worth having.

Yes, this is still an issue. The settings are still in an xml file, which is localized at compile time, and the translations are still not exported back to the source tree from LP translations. Furthermore, this problem in general was discussed on ubuntu-translators@ and was refused to solve, because it would take too much time/resources. See:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2008-October/001822.html

In Ubuntu 8.10 most of the strings in keyboard configuration are translated into Czech (I guess that's an upstream's work). But as Gabor said, this is probably still an issue.

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Hi kamil.paral,

Thanks for including the attached files. Could you also include your /var/log/Xorg.0.log?

I think it is not needed.

It is good to hear that the issue of czech translations being broken is now resolved.

The issue of xkeyboard-config not using Rosetta is not something we can address. We use what upstream provides, and it is their choice what software to use to handle translations. You are welcome to approach upstream to make this request, but esp. since launchpad still is not open sourced it might be more feasible to investigate if you can export your work in Rosetta in a form that the xkeyboard-config project can utilize.