The Editor

The Editor

Here's a screenshot of KBabel. Main window is split in four panels. For convenience KBabel has toolbars to speed up many operations and for high working people there are many shortcuts. Upper left edit box is read-only and contains the current msgid field from the opened PO-file and it's english text. Bottom left edit box is msgstr field related and here you can edit the translated text. On top-right window part is comments panel where you can view comments added for current edited entry. It's covenient to find how entry is treated (c-formated or simple). In some cases you can read helpfull comments added by application developer who care about translators work and translating dificulties, for example where terms have different interpretation in application. Undoubtefully, translators need to have a very good general culture, but in some high tech programs comments seems to help very much. A good example is LyX Project which use TeX terminology. Another uses are when you need to know from what file current messages is because you want to report a spelling mistake in original English string.

Editor window Bottom-right part is the most sofisticated one. It's size can be adjusted with spliter line which border the space between it and comment panel. It is multifunctional and have two tabbed panels: search and context information. Contextual information tab contain a scrolled view which show the 4 precedent and 4 next entries according with current entry. It's as you may see a snapshot from edited PO file.What's this good? It's very common that when you translate many strings are related both in advance and back, so you may have a look if you have no clue how current entry can be best translated. Dialog interface translation is a good example or widgets have along with its asociated text and "what's this" quick help.

More KBabel features

Shortly, I would explain that a msgid entry can be in three states:

untranslated

which obviously mean there's no translated text associated with msgstr

fuzzy

msgmerge had tried to match better translated string looking in rest of PO-file entries. This does not work perfectly and you must edit the translated text to fit the current english text.

translated

obvious this mean current msgid entry is translated.

The state of the current entry is indicated by two LEDs. Depending on your configuration, these can be in statusbar or above the translated string edit box. Both have customizable color to reflect your visual requirements or taste. Please read Preferences section to see how you can adjust these settings.

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