Celestia Forums

Some days ago I decided - not knowing what this would mean - do build a 'quick' german version of the Windows UI for celestia. Well, until now I came up with something, but there is still a huge amount of work to do.

Here are the results until now (all: right-click & save as...):
COPYING.DE - the german version of the GPL, that I've got from the net. Place this into your Celestia main folder and rename it 'COPYING'. Rename the original 'COPYING' to 'COPYING.EN' before. In Celestia, 'Help->Licence' resp. 'Hilfe->Lizenz' will show you this.

controls.de.txt - the german version of the celestia controls description file. Place this into your Celestia main folder and rename it 'controls.txt'. Rename the original 'controls.txt' to 'controls.en.txt' before. In Celestia, 'Help->Controls' resp. 'Hilfe->Steuerung' will show you this.

guide.de.cel - the german version of the tour guide. Place this into your Celestia main folder and alter your configuration file 'celestia.cfg': Search for the line 'DestinationFile "guide.cel"' and replace the name by 'guide.de.cel'. In Celestia, 'Navigation->Tour Guide...' resp. 'Navigation->gef??hrte Tour...' will show you this.

celestia.de.rc - the german version of the resource file. You can use this only if you compile your own version of Celestia from the CVS tree. Place it into 'celestia/src/celestia/res' and rename it 'celestia.rc'. Rename the original 'celestia.rc' to 'celestia.en.rc' before.

celestia CVSbuild 050411.exe - a ready compiled german windows version for trial, build from CVS tree on 11. Apr 2005.

more to come...

maxim

Some more stuff is done so far:
controls.de.txt and celestia.de.rc have been updated due to minor translation improvements.

I managed to peel a lot of string constants out of the files 'celestiacore.cpp', 'winbookmarks.cpp', 'wineclipses.cpp', 'winstarbrowser.cpp' and 'winmain.cpp'. This should cover almost every kind of string that is used in the UI. I ignored strings that are send to standard console, error console or similar. The string constants are combined in a new file - textresource.h.

Very unfortunately, some of the string constants are used for output and as global parameters simultaneously. So Celestia will crash occassionally when these are translated. I haven't found them yet - they are somewhere inside the win*.cpp files. So until now I can give you only this for a trial:

celestiacore.cpp - the altered celestiacore.cpp file that now contains defined constants instead of strings. For use with 'textresource.h'. Goes to 'celestia/src/celestia'.

textresource.h - a newly created file containing all constant strings that I could find, concerning the UI. Goes to 'celestia/src/celestia/res' for self-compilation.

Any complains about the translation or about my coding style appreciated (if there is anyone interested at all).

maxim

Be aware that the i18n patch will be commited soon.

Along with your .rc and .txt files that will give you a fully localized version without having to fiddle with the code. Plus you get translated solar system objects without breaking cel urls and scripts.

Ok, this should be about the final version.

I've put the whole stuff into a zip-file for downloading: celestia CVSbuild 050417.zip

This includes all source files and a ready compiled windows version, build from CVS on 17. April 2005. You should be able to easily use the compiled version in your usual Celestia environment.

Some more minor improvement were made. I had to split the string resources into two files - one with ASCII encoding for use with strings for the Windows UI, and one with UTF-8 encoding for use with strings for the Celestia OSD UI. The resources files should cover any string used for the UIs. I've tried to do a carefull translation, not by doing a word-by-word replacement, but by translating for the most proper meaning of original strings. This sometimes let me use words that would be different if translated word-by-word, but avoid to sound 'funny' in german. In a few cases I changed the style of a label, because I thought I found a better fitting one. For example I changed 'Rsun' (the factor for radius) to 'r(Sol)', because it seemed to be more (sientifically) accurate to me. However, if you find something that you think could be made better, don't hesitate to drop me a note.


You can use this localized version until the i18n patch becomes part of Celestia.

It would be nice, if the parts that could be used in conjuction with the i18n patch would find their way into the CVS, so this work wasn't just for my personal convenience.

maxim

guide.de.cel

error

celestia.cfg -> 'DestinationFile "guide.cel"' -> 'DestinationFile "guide.de.cel"'
Celestia -> Navigation -> Tour Guide -> voila!

maxim

About GUI's and multilanguage cross platform version of Celestia...

Today I red an article that sent me to http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs ... cense.html

I think that is an opportunity that has to be carefully evaluated.

It will solve many issues of the Celestia delvelopment. Even add-on manager.

Yes, it seems like Qt 4 will be available under the GPL for Windows too. But Qt 4 hasn't been released yet, and we don't even have a Qt 3 version of Celestia yet.

So, although this is certainly great news, it will probably take some time until we have a cross platform Qt 4 based Celestia. I'm actually wondering if we should start a pure Qt version or just wait for KDE 4 which will most probably be available for Windows too. KDE 4, won't be out until at least a year after Qt 4 is released, but developping a new interface with Qt would take quite a while too.

maxim wrote:celestia.cfg -> 'DestinationFile "guide.cel"' -> 'DestinationFile "guide.de.cel"'
Celestia -> Navigation -> Tour Guide -> voila!

maxim

merci !

maxim wrote:Some days ago I decided - not knowing what this would mean - do build a 'quick' german version of the Windows UI for celestia.
maxim

A german speaking GUI for Windows?
Did you miss this:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/utilities.html
(see section "Localization")?

Adirondack

Christophe wrote:Yes, it seems like Qt 4 will be available under the GPL for Windows too. But Qt 4 hasn't been released yet, and we don't even have a Qt 3 version of Celestia yet.

So, although this is certainly great news, it will probably take some time until we have a cross platform Qt 4 based Celestia. I'm actually wondering if we should start a pure Qt version or just wait for KDE 4 which will most probably be available for Windows too. KDE 4, won't be out until at least a year after Qt 4 is released, but developping a new interface with Qt would take quite a while too.

I think that for KDE4 its a very long time to wait.
QT4 for linux and mac is already available in beta 2 for open source developers. I think that if 2 or 3 o us will be involved a QT version of Celestia will be ready before the end of 2005.
Its a large project but the benefits will be considerable and immediate.
I would be very glad if Chris and the other developers will give their opinion.

Adirondack wrote:A german speaking GUI for Windows?
Did you miss this:

Well, yours is only partly german. You just changed the resource file entries.
But yes, I wasn't aware of it, indeed.

maxim

BTW, some funny translations, i.e.: 'fuzzy points' -> 'wolkige Punkte'

Paolo wrote:I think that for KDE4 its a very long time to wait.
QT4 for linux and mac is already available in beta 2 for open source developers. I think that if 2 or 3 o us will be involved a QT version of Celestia will be ready before the end of 2005.
Its a large project but the benefits will be considerable and immediate.
I would be very glad if Chris and the other developers will give their opinion.

I think most of the code between a future KDE 4 and Qt 4 version could be common, simply by using the K or Qt:: class. The problem is that the KDE 4 API doesn't exist yet, so if we want to start a Qt 4 version now we won't be able to take advantage of this and we will end up with twice as much code to maintain (KDE 3 / Qt 4).

I suspect the Qt 4 API is too different from Qt 3 for a port from the existing KDE 3 to be worthwhile, we will have to start anew (except maybe for the QGLWidget which hasn't changed much, but it isn't the most difficult part either).

That means that when KDE 4 finally comes out, we will have the option of either porting the KDE 3 code, or extending the Qt 4 code (with ifdefs and compile switches). The later seems a better option since that will allow us to keep a backward compatible KDE 3 version, but that also means that the KDE 4 version might look and behave quite differently from the KDE 3 version.

What I fear too, is that starting a pure Qt version will lead us to reinvent the wheel that's already in KDE (KConfig, KUniqueApplication, etc...)

maxim wrote:Well, yours is only partly german.

No, that's NOT true. The entire GUI is in german. Except the context menu and the HUD, as you can read within the info-file within my german package.

You just changed the resource file entries.

No, that's also NOT true. I've translated the controls.txt and guide.cel as well. Even the asterisms are in german (with the help of Jens). Did you read the info-file I mentioned above?

Seems to me that you never noticed my efforts to provide german documentations (Users's guide, CEL-Scripting, SSC-Scripting ...) including the german version of Celestia and a lot of german speaking scripts.
And now you try to invent the 'german-win-gui-wheel' again. Why?

I do provide german versions of Celestia since version 1.3.1. And now you woke up and want to make things better?

Adirondack

Christophe wrote:I think most of the code between a future KDE 4 and Qt 4 version could be common, simply by using the K or Qt:: class. The problem is that the KDE 4 API doesn't exist yet, so if we want to start a Qt 4 version now we won't be able to take advantage of this and we will end up with twice as much code to maintain (KDE 3 / Qt 4).

...

What I fear too, is that starting a pure Qt version will lead us to reinvent the wheel that's already in KDE (KConfig, KUniqueApplication, etc...)

I've pointed some good arguments indeed. But I guess we will wait at least for a couple of years in order to have a multiplatform UI if we wait for QT/KDE 4.

Adirondack wrote:

maxim wrote:Well, yours is only partly german.

No, that's NOT true. The entire GUI is in german. Except the context menu and the HUD, as you can read within the info-file within my german package.

The OSD strings are missing, the screen flash strings, the context menu entries, some captions, the list header strings and the warning and error messages. That's definitely 'partly'.

Adirondack wrote:Seems to me that you never noticed my efforts to provide german documentations (Users's guide, CEL-Scripting, SSC-Scripting ...)...

Well, I did. I appreciate it and I will surely not start to try to translate all this again.

Adirondack wrote:And now you try to invent the 'german-win-gui-wheel' again. Why?

Because I wanted to do a -complete- german localisation.

Adirondack wrote:I do provide german versions of Celestia since version 1.3.1. And now you woke up and want to make things better?

I didn't indend to offend you by making my translations. I didn't even know there already was one. You can merge mine with yours if you like - after all it's GPL stuff.

maxim