GIT repositories for configuration and text files

[jamespetts]

To make it easier for others to participate in the development of texts for Simutrans-Experimental (especially translations), and also to edit and/or update configuration files, I have added configuration and text files for Simutrans-Experimental to their own Git repositories.

Here is the Github repository for the configuration files. That contains the generic simuconf.tab, along with privatecar.tab and electricity.tab, although note that the latter two files work only from a pakset directory.

Here is the Github repository for the text files. This includes all the languages for the translation texts and the help texts. All languages apart from English are unaltered from the texts for Simutrans-Standard. The English help files are in the process of being rewritten to update them for the additional features of Simutrans-Experimental, as well as new features of Simutrans-Standard added after the help files were first written.

[Bernd Gabriel]

I started updating the pak independent "en.tab" and "de.tab".

A little Excel-Sheet helps me:

This is a more handy format than editing the .tab files.
The second file finds the already loaded "Key" words.

The results (and if of interest, the excel sheet as well) will be available soon.

June, 25 2009:
Now available:
The translations files at: Topic: Pak independent translation files en.tab and de.tab for R 4.3 available

The sheet at: simutrans.tab.xls
How to use it:
1) copy sheet and translation files in the same directory.
2) open the sheet with MS Excel (r). Yes, the sheet contains macros (just in case you get an unexpected warning).
3) There are 3 language columns. You may edit 1, 2 or 3 translation files simultaneously.
    Put the name of the translation file into row 3.
4) Click the 'Load' button.
    The translation file is loaded. All comments are gathered into row 6 no matter where in the file they appear.
    The first column now contains the keywords and the language column the translations.
5) If you load another language file, it finds the existing keywords and puts the translation into the appropriate row.
    All new keywords are added at the end of the list.
6) You may structure the list with up to 10 subsequent empty rows.
    More than 10 subsequent empty rows define the end of the list.
7) Edit translations, add keywords and translations, or remove keywords and/or translations.
To save the results, click 'Save'. The previous translation file is renamed to *.tab.bak before writing the new one.
    It first writes the language and then all rows with existing pairs of keyword and translation.

[jamespetts]

Bernd - that's extremely useful! Thank you.

[VS]

This reminds me why I think our tab file system seems rather painful, compared to gettext :(

James, if you didn't know yet, translation files are loaded with somewhat free-minded approach. I am not absolutely sure if this works for all translations or only in pakset folders. Anyway, when this happens, actually only suffix .tab and first two letters matter. It's an interesting trick that allows more than one file per translation. So, in the end, if you wanted, you might probably use experimental-specific translations together with standard ones.

[jamespetts]

VS,

thank you for the tip! I think that I shall retain the current way of doing things for the present, however, as I have been working to improve the quality of the translation texts in any event (removing inconsistent capitalisation, using clearer terms, etc.). It's useful to know how it works, though! :-)