New WebTranslator

[frosch]

Happy christmas season everyone,

as you may know, OpenTTD's translations have been handled via a Web Interface since ages.
When I joined OpenTTD in 2007, stuff was handled by WebTranslator 2, which to me sounds like already the second incarnation of the service ^^
In 2009 TrueBrain did a complete overhaul of the OpenTTD website, which also included a complete new WebTranslator 3, which has been in service since then.

As you also may know, at the #OpenTTDcoop DevZone we have had a WebTranslator called Eints since 2013.
Its goal was to supply all NewGRFs with a Translation Interface, which removed the burden from GRF authors to collect and update translations from various translators.
While it started only supporting translations for NewGRF, which is still reflected in its name today, it soon gained support for GameScripts.

In 2013/2014 it became apparent, that some parts of the OpenTTD Website need renewing.
One of the burdens on TrueBrain's back was WebTranslator 3. So in 2015 Albert, TrueBrain and myself started to advance Eints to its
final milestone: Supporting and handling all Translation tasks in the OpenTTD universe.

OpenTTD.org and OpenTTDcoop.org are different websites, and Eints needs to operate differently on them. Just to list some:

• OpenTTDcoop runs many projects via RedMine, all with different developers and user permissions.
• OpenTTD runs a single project, but it has as many strings as all projects at #coop combined.
• OpenTTDcoop manages users via RedMine, OpenTTD via LDAP.
• OpenTTD is versioned with SubVersion, OpenTTDcoop mostly uses Mercurial.

As of today, WebTranslator 3 is offline. https://translator.openttd.org is now running an Eints instance.
While we hope things will run smoothly, please report back
Either here or via https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/openttd-eints

In case you wonder what logins to use where:

• OpenTTD account: Everything at openttd.org: Wiki, BaNaNaS, FlySpray and also the new Eints.
• TT-Forums account: Forums, TT-Wiki and NewGRFSpecs-Wiki.
• DevZone account: Everything at openttdcoop.org: DevZone, Wiki and Eints over there.

[TrueBrain]

I would like this opportunity to thank both Alberth and frosch for their hard work getting eints ready for OpenTTD! There were a few bridges to cross, but I am very happy you both spend the time on it getting it done! (eints has been in the pipelines for ~6 months, from my request to make it ready to OpenTTD, to rolling it out; just to give you an idea of the length of this project)

Switching WT3 for a project that is supported comes to great relieve for me; WT3 had some bugs we all knew about, but weren't getting fixed (which I can only blame on myself, I promise you). Having finally a product again that is being actively supported is awesome!

Also, with the removal of WT3, it means I can finally continue removing one of the oldest pieces of our infrastructure, and replace them with modern solutions. WT3 was still running on a heavily modified Django 1.2 with Python 2.5 .. which is far from ideal

So thank you both, and I hope everyone else also enjoys the new, fresh, fast, and cool web translator: eints!

[pelya]

Can I use it to translate strings specific to Android port? Do I need to create a dummy NewGRF for this?

[frosch]

You could setup a project at the DevZone. It does not need to be a NewGRF. However

• There must be a source repository at DevZone which contains at least the language files.
• Currently DevZone Eints only supports Mercurial, though we can also add git.
• Eints can only commit to repositories at DevZone, so you would have to pull from there.

Another "problem" is in the fork-nature. On DevZone there are some forks of some projects, like FISH<->REDFISH, ... (wasn't there also one for FIRS?). But they do not receive translation updates from each other.
So, translators have to translate the same string for both projects, unless someone merges them using the VCS.

In summary: Feel free to ask for a project at DevZone. But you may need some custom scripts for porting/merging translations from OpenTTD, and between repositories.

You can get more information at:

• https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/home
• https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/ho ... agingEints

[pelya]

Thanks, I'll do that.
If I'm already creating scripts to pull things around, I'll also make them remove all non-Android-specific strings from the project.

[Voyager One]

One small question please...

It seems my access for Croatian has been cancelled... Or I need a new one since it's a new "program"?


EDIT: Scratch that, sorry. I've figured it out. I have two different logins, one works for OTTD translation, other works for NeWGRF translations... A mess. My mess.

[GunChleoc]

Thanks for updating the tool!

[pelya]

I've requested a new translation project for Android port https://dev.openttdcoop.org/issues/8133
I've already created some scripts to merge stuff back and forth between repos.