Translations for "Add/Remove Applications"
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I found that there is a process "/usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/trisquel-app-install" when "Add/Remove Applications" is started but I a not sure it is this.
I have Trisquel setup in French. In Mate's menu, everything is in French, so it is "Ajouter/supprimer des applications" but the window title when it is started is "Add/Remove Applications" and in it, the categories on the left are all in English, except "All" that is translated to French, below each application name there are a few words in French briefly saying what it is, but in the panel just below where there are more details, everything is in English, for all applications and I could not find any description in French for any application, including applications that have full French translation and manual (even some originally written in French).
Is "Add/Remove Applications" a Trisquel specific app or is it adapted from Ubuntu or something else?
I noticed I don't have this application in Debian (on my desktop, Trisquel does not work), I think this application is great but it would need to show translated descriptions. Is it so that translation exists but there is a bug that does not select them or are they simply missing?
This app is now a custom app for trisquel, seems like it's been dropped from almost all distros.
You can contribute here:
https://gitlab.trisquel.org/trisquel/trisquel-app-install
Cheers!
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I'd like to contribute but if it has been dropped from almost all distros, isn't it better to only consider limited changes to it and for further improvements, consider making a replacement based on something maintained, like Gnome Software? Of course, I am afraid Gnome Software might propose non-free things, so that would need to be solved (I noticed that Parabola has blacklisted gnome-software due to a dependency on archlinux-appstream-data that includes non-free things).
That said, I guess a key point would be to understand where the package descriptions are exactly coming from.
The README says
The package information based on Freedesktop .desktop files. This is due to all end-user applications already having a .desktop file which can be extended with a small amount of metadata for use by the application install tool. These .desktop files will be extracted from the Hoary archive automatically and a package solely containing .desktop files and the relevant icons created.
I also found https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Howto_desktop_files/, the last sentence is "This is if you want to use translations (= little bit complicated)" but it doesn't really give any information about translations.
I am wondering whether the lack of translations of package descriptions in Trisquel's "Add/Remove Applications" is because the packages did not provide translations, or not in the standard format, or Trisquel fails to extract them. I'll try to make comparisons with Gnome Software as I see it in Debian.
trisquel-app-install was added as a trisquel package since early etiona development as it is "stable" enough, and performs all the necessary tasks required for such app.
For what I know, trisquel-app-install l10n will relay mostly on community efforts.
Changing to any other tool will require major development and rewrite just to get what we already have with t-a-i, as development resources are limited, there are several other tasks already allocating all available time.
Either suggesting to change t-a-i for something else, or submitting l10n changes, please fill the request at the trisquel-app-install's gitlab project.
Regards.
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About "performs all the necessary tasks required": this might not be the view of people who don't understand or are uncomfortable with English.
I looked in gitlab, in the po directory, I found nothing matching the categories as I see them in English, so I don't know how to provide translations. Also, I don't know where the "short description" and the "long description" (names I just invented as I have no clue on the names used) for each application are to be found, English versions and translations.
I'd like to contribute but I can't find where to do it.
The short description comes from the .desktop file of the package. The long description is the description of the package itself. I don't think that last one can be translated.
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trisquel-app-install shows short and long descriptions of applications that are not installed, so they have been extracted but I don't know where that extraction is.
$ sudo find / -type f -name "*.desktop" -printf "%h\n" |sort|uniq -c
19 /etc/xdg/autostart
2 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/gtk-modules
1 /usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon-1.0/gtk-modules
2323 /usr/share/app-install/desktop
71 /usr/share/applications
18 /usr/share/applications/screensavers
2 /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils
1 /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow
1 /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart
1 /usr/share/indicator-application/upstart/xdg/autostart
1 /usr/share/lightdm/guest-session/skel/.config/autostart
1 /usr/share/mate/applications
1 /usr/share/Thunar/sendto
2 /usr/share/upstart/xdg/autostart
54 /usr/share/xfce4/helpers
1 /usr/share/xgreeters
1 /usr/share/xscreensaver
3 /usr/share/xsessions
$
By pure chance, I looked up Epiphany, the game, not the browser, for which "Add/Remove Applications" shows a short description in French on my system:
$ sudo find / -type f -name "epiphany*.desktop"
/usr/share/app-install/desktop/epiphany:epiphany-game.desktop
/usr/share/app-install/desktop/epiphany-browser:org.gnome.Epiphany.desktop
/usr/share/xfce4/helpers/epiphany.desktop
$
None of these files has a translation in French, so "Add/Remove Applications" seems to use something else than .desktop files on the system for short descriptions, maybe it has some kind of database. This is what I would like to find.
For the long descriptions, I don't know where to look but there must also be a database used by trisquel-app-install that is stored locally.
For the categories: I found https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/add-remove.html.fr, which looks like trisquel-app-install, but the category names are translated, unlike in Trisquel. If trisquel-app-install is derived from gnome-app-install, there should be a way to provide translations for categories.
When I mentioned changing application: I am just looking for the easiest way to get translations. If there are applications that have translations and are free software, let's use these translations rather than asking volunteers to redo the same work.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the search function of "Add/Remove Applications" finds Epiphany when searching for "minerals", that is part of the English description, while it can't find it when searching for "rocheux", that is part of the French description. So that search function is English only it seems.
EDIT2: Trying software-center on Debian, I see there are a number of long descriptions translated. I'll try to find where they are.
> None of these files has a translation in French, so "Add/Remove Applications" seems to use something else than .desktop files on the system for short descriptions, maybe it has some kind of database. This is what I would like to find.
There must be multiple sources. When I (after deleting the cache in /var/cache/app-install) modified the descriptions in /usr/share/app-install/desktop/blender:blender.desktop, the modifications appeared when I opened "Add/Remove Applications".
Wait, I think I found it. Those translations are provided by the language-pack-[language]-base (insert fr instead of [language], in your case) packages. The source of those seems to be Ubuntu, so the upstream source is https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-pack-fr-base.
> For the long descriptions, I don't know where to look but there must also be a database used by trisquel-app-install that is stored locally.
The long descriptions are identical to the output of apt show. Compare the long description of Epiphany with apt show epiphany.
> EDIT2: Trying software-center on Debian, I see there are a number of long descriptions translated. I'll try to find where they are.
Do you mean gnome-software? I tried to check it out, but I couldn't find any description.