Proposal for translation of configurable labels

The Problem

We have translatable messages since Trac-0.12, even extended the i18n system towards configuration option doc-strings. But we're still missing translations in some rather prominent places.

Currently untranslatable items

This is a list of items, that can't be localized yet (including related tickets):

• Enum
  • ticket properties:
    • type
    • status (see configurable ticket workflow below)
    • priority
    • serverity
    • milestone (see below)
    • customized labels for standard fields (see #6249)
  • milestone label, used in tickets too
  • component name, used in tickets too
• configurable ticket workflow
  • action name (see #9472)
  • ticket status, used in tickets and timeline as well, new and closed even hard-coded in ticket system code, including reports and custom queries (see #9799)
• timeline
  • ticket changes (related to ticket status from work-flow above, see #5441)

Well, I guess this should be almost identical to MissingTranslations (listed by module), right?

A possible solution

The following rough sketch of a suitable translation work-flow sprung from discussion on IRC tonight (25-Oct-2012):

• $> trac-admin <env> extract_custom_messages
  1. produces a new file env/htdocs/locale/trac_custom.pot or
  2. updates an existing one
• use similar standard procedures for PO files (more trac-admin commands here)
  • create new message catalogs for a language
  • update one/all existing messages catalogs
• use standard procedures to edit message catalogs

Implementation details

The aforementioned work-flow implies, that custom message cataloges are rather volatile. But recompilation on Trac environment load should be avoided, because this could be rather time-consuming. So it must be possible to pre-compile them, i.e. with yet another trac-admin command.

Wishlist

(Order should matter)

• auto-generated TRANSLATOR hints like # ini:ticket-workflow or # enum:priority
• include a basic common set of typical terms, like work-flow action names from default ticket work-flow
• detect changes, to remind for recompilation, if pending changes are detected, but PO (clear-text) and MO (compiled) message catalog files change time must be tracked like done for trac.ini to make this happen