This directory gathers all files and tools involved in internationalization and
localization of documents in asciidoc format, shell scripts, and man pages
included in Slackware and Slint.

We assume that readers are acquainted with internationalization and
localization processes, else fore an introduction they can read:
https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:misc:internationalization_and_localization_of_shell_scripts
As a remider we will shortly describe the involved processes.

In this case they include usage of the `po4a` application to process documents
in asciidoc format and the Crowdin platform is mainly used by there translators
to translate on-line using their graphical PO editor. The translation manager
can use the `crowdin` client application to to manage the files transfer
from/to the Crowdin platform @ https://crowdin.com/project/slint.

1. Internationalization and generation of a POT file.

The files to be localized (translated), or "source files" fall in one of these
categories: shell scripts, manual pages and documents in the asciidoc format.

Before localization shell scripts need to be internationalized, identifying
the text strings to be translated and marking them as such. This can be done
when writing the shell script (better!) or afterwards.

Software can be used to gather the strings to be translated in a POT file or
Portable Object Template. A POT file can gather texts strings coming from
several source files.  

The shell scripts gathered here are already internationalized and the gettext
software is used to build the POT files from these source files.

Documents in asciidoc format and man pages do not need to be internationalized
as the po4a software can extract directly the text strings to be translated
from the genuine source files to build the associated POT file.

2. Generation of the PO files.

The PO files or Portable Object files (one for each target language) include
the same text strings as the POT file with placeholders for the corresponding
translations and some metadata like the names of the translators and the locale
(roughly: the language and its geographical variant) of the translation. The
software used to generate the POT file (gettext or po4a) can also generate the
PO files, given the list of locales in which the translation will be done.

The translation manager triggers the generation of the POT and PO files.

3. Translation.

The translation is done by (you guessed?) the translators, including in the PO
file each text string they tanslate into the target language alongside its
genuine version. As doing so using a general text editor would be error prone
it is highly recommended that they use instead either a specialized PO editor
like for instance poedit, or an on line specialized editor, like the one
provided by Crowdin.

The sources files are stored in ./sources.