Translating Photivo

Photivo uses Qt’s built-in translation capabilities. That makes it easy and convenient to translate but needs a bit of setting up at first. In this article we walk you through all the installation steps. If you run into problems or have any questions, contact Brother John.

It’s probably a good idea to get in touch anyway to avoid multiple people doing the same language in parallel.

From Qt you need Qt Linguist to do the actual translation and the lupdate tool to create and update the translation file for your language. Also you need the Mercurial version control software to get the Photivo source code.

• First create a folder where you want all the translation tools and Photivo itself to be located. We’ll assume C:\ptTranslate in this article but you can use any folder you like.
• Qt Linguist and lupdate are included in the Qt SDK that you can get from the official Qt download site. However, that is a huge download (over 300 MB) and most of it is unnecessary. That’s why we provide a stripped down version (from the Qt 4.7.0 SDK installer) with only the necessary stuff: grab it from Google Code and unpack it to your C:\ptTranslate folder.
• Mercurial: Get the Windows commandline setup (MSI version recommended) from the Mercurial download site and install it. If you already have Mercurial or a graphical tool like ToroiseHg installed, that will work as well.
• Open a console window (also known as command prompt or DOS window) in your C:\ptTranslate folder.

(Probably works the same or very similar for Mac.)

• Create a directory for all the translation stuff. We’ll assume ~/ptTranslate for this article
• Install Qt Linguist and lupdate via your package manager. If you cannot find them individually, look for the Qt 4 SDK.
• Also install Mercurial, if you do not already have it. A graphical tool like ToroiseHg will work as well.
• Open a terminal window in your ~/ptTranslate directory.

Now you are ready to get your translation started. First you get a copy of Photivo’s source code, then you tell Photivo about the new language and generate the translation file.

• From the opened console window first get a clone of the Photivo source code repository. Execute these lines (works for both Windows and Linux):
  

  hg clone https://photivo.googlecode.com/hg/ photivo
  cd photivo
  hg update default

  Leave the window open.

• Open the file photivoProject.pro in the photivoProject subfolder with a text editor and at the very end of the file add a new translation line for your language (just below the other translation lines).
  

  TRANSLATIONS += ../Translations/photivo_LANGNAME.ts

  Replace the LANGNAME with the English name of your language, e.g. “German” or “Italian”. Photivo uses the LANGNAME part of the file name to display the available translations on the Settings tab.

• In the console window run lupdate:
  Windows:

  "C:\ptTranslate\lupdate.exe" photivo.pro

  Linux:

  lupdate photivo.pro

• There should now be a new photivo_LANGNAME.ts file in Photivo’s Translations subfolder.

• Open your photivo_LANGNAME.ts with Qt Linguist and start translating.
• When you open the translation file for the first time Qt Linguist displays the language selection dialog. Adjust the Destination language as needed but keep the Source language unchanged, even if it looks weird.
• The Qt documentation includes a tutorial for Qt Linguist.

You can test your translation with your normal Photivo installation.

• Compile the translation file (File › Release in Qt Linguist). That produces photivo_LANGNAME.qm in the same folder as your photivo_LANGNAME.ts.
• Copy the .qm file to
  • Linux: ~/.photivo/translations
  • Win Vista/7: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Photivo\Translations (the path might appear translated into your Windows’s language in Explorer)
  • Win XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Photivo\Translations (the path is translated into your Windows’s language).
• Start Photivo, go to the Settings tab and choose your language from the Translation combobox.

To get your translation officially into Photivo we only need the completed .ts file – but if you can provide a final .qm as well, we won’t complain. The translation needs to be licensed under the GNU GPL version 3 like the rest of Photivo. Also tell us how you’d like to be credited. Full name? Nickname only? E-mail address? The person to get in touch with is again Brother John.

Of course with time text in Photivo’s GUI will change and new text will appear. That’s no immediate problem, because if Photivo cannot find a translation for a certain item it will just use the default English text.

Updating the translation is easy:

• Like above open a console window in your Photivo source code folder (where photivo.pro is located).
• Update to the latest source code revision:
  

  hg pull
  hg update default

• Run lupdate to add the new strings to your photivo_LANGNAME.ts:
  Windows:

  "C:\ptTranslate\lupdate.exe" photivo.pro

  Linux:

  lupdate photivo.pro

• In Qt Linguist the new strings are marked as unfinished so you can find them easily.