DeepSkyStacker Localization Guide

Introduction
DeepSkyStacker is available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Catalan, German, Dutch, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian.

The way to localize DeepSkyStacker for another language is described below.
Basically you will need to translate a set of character strings and send them back to me so that I can integrate them in the official release.

As you will see it is quite easy to do.

Localizing in 4 steps

Step 1
Download the DSSGeneric.po file.
It is a text file that you can edit in any text editor but it is much easier to...

Step 2
...download POEdit which is a free software designed to deal with .po files.
POEdit is available here: http://www.poedit.net/

Step 3
Translate all the not translated strings contained in the DSSGeneric.po file by replacing all the untranslated string with the correct translation.

Step 4
Send me the modified DSSGeneric.po file (deepskystacker (at) free (dot) fr) along with the language in which the translation is done.

That's it!
I will integrate your translation as soon as possible and will send you a link to a new beta version so that you can check that the translation is ok.
As soon as the new localization is validated an official release of DeepSkyStacker will be made available for all.
 

What's in for you

As you know DeepSkyStacker is a freeware and if you are expecting money it's definitely not the right place.

However, I will add a link to the web site of your choice (within reasonable limits: no commercial or off topic links) in the Introduction page of DeepSkyStacker and in the About dialog of DeepSkyStacker.

Of course there is a small twist...
DeepSkyStacker is constantly enhanced with new features that need new translations.
Most of the time it's only a few translations every few weeks, but sometimes a major release might add a bunch of new strings.

So, even if it's mostly a one shot effort it is also important to maintain quality over time and I will need you for it.

Localization Guidelines
Here are some localization  guidelines that you must follow in order to get a usable localization.

• \n, \t, \r, <b>, </b> or other html tags must be left unchanged.
   
• When something like %s, %d, %ld, %.2f or anything starting with % is in a string it will be replaced by a value at run time.
  It must absolutely be left unchanged and the order in which they appear in the English string must remain the same.
  For example: “%ld stars with mean radius of %.2f” must not be modified to “%.2f mean radius for %ld stars” (I think that you get my drift).
   
• Some strings obviously must not be translated.
  For example: "MS Shell Dlg", "Button", "Slider1", "Static" but there might be a few other strings lurking in there.
   
• The localized string should be roughly of the same length as the original string when it is possible.
  However, once the translation is done I will check all the dialog boxes and resize the controls accordingly.
   
• Some special care must be taken in order to be as close to the language as possible.
  For example:
  In English Gb means Gigabyte, in French it’s Go…
  In English 12 hr 12 mn 59 s is translated to 12 h 12 m 59 s in French
  In English there is never a white space before a semicolon (:) or a ? or a !, in French there is always one

The Technical Side
I am using Resource Localizer (a very affordable shareware) to keep DeepSkyStacker synchronized in all the languages.
Once the initial translation is done, it is used to generate the po files with only the new translations for both DeepSkyStacker and DeepSkyStacker Live, to integrate the translations back and to resize the dialog controls when necessary on a per language basis.