[Development] Qt Linguist - Some requests

[Hans Schmidt]

Hello,

I tried to translate an application with Qt Linguist. While doing this,
I noticed the following things:

1. I had to install the complete Qt framework. It would be much better
if there were a stand alone installer, which ONLY installs the Qt
Linguist. I guess most translators are not developers and therefore may
not need the entire Qt framework. This is also addressed in this forum
entry: http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/17054.
This is especially a nuisance if you have a slower Internet connection
and have to download a larger installation file.

2. Currently, only the source strings are shown in a tabular view. If
you want to compare several previously made translations, it is not
possible. Also, if you want to proofread already translated string, you
have to select every single string. This is really uncomfortable. It
would be much better if both the source string as well as the translated
string are shown in a tabular view, so that you can check and compare
with a quick glance.

3. Qt Linguist shows every space with a small dot. Although this
certainly has its uses, it is sometimes quite distracting. Also, if you
want to check if there is a hyphen (-) between two words, it is hard to
tell the difference between a space and a hyphen. It would be better if
this annotation could be disabled. For warnings, it were better if Qt
Linguist would warn against multiple spaces following.

4. Please support smart quotes. Although this is not a problem for me,
many translators do not employ smart quotes (e.g. “...” in English,
„...“ in German, «...» in French), because they are usually not present
on the keyboard. It would be better if Qt Linguist would automatically
insert them.

5. It would be good if there were a list for “related strings”, e.g.
where the same word is also used in other strings. For example, if you
have a certain phrase or word often used in many strings, it would be
good if Qt Linguist automatically showed a list with other strings where
the phrase occurs, so that you can create a coherent translation.

6. The search function should have the option to search for complete
words. If you want to search for one word, which is also contained in
other words, it will give too many results (e.g., I looked for “sie”
(=“she”, wanted to translate it to “Sie”=“you”), but also got
“Aktualisierung“. Also, if searched, the word should be highlighted in
the result. Search and replace does not seem to work in the existing
translation. This is especially necessary if you want to correct an
existing translation

It would be good if some of these issues could be addressed. Currently,
I find Qt Linguist really hard to use in a more complex setting.
Especially issues 1 and 2 are quite important, in my opinion. Or is
there a better alternative to Qt Linguist?

Thanks,
Hans Schmidt