Here you'll find the most frequent questions and answers about gtranslator.

• Q: What is this learn buffer you're talking so often?
• A: The learn buffer is the gtranslator specific implementation of a Translation Memory (we will call it TM furthermore) to help translators easyfying their work by translating always re-occuring messages with already learned and saved translations.
  
  gtranslator's learn buffer is a quite simple but effective kind of translation memory in the UMTF XML format (you can output the contents of it into a normal plain xml file via the command line gzip -dc ~/.gtranslator/umtf/personal-learn-buffer.xml > PLAIN_XML_FILE BTW).
  
  After learning some of your already well translated po files (look for the next Q&A pair for more information) you can simply use the auto translating capabilities of gtranslator to perform a good level of auto translation for already in the learn buffer saved message & translation pairs; you can do this via the GUI under "_File/_Auto translate" or just on the command line without even having to start the GUI via the command line gtranslator -a PO_FILE_TO_AUTO_TRANSLATE. A learn buffer just makes your life as a translator much easier as if you did build up a quite normal-sized (effectively 300+ KB) learn buffer gtranslator performs an auto translation level of ca. 15% (this is just an approximiately value, which could be objected by some users equally). It saves you work! It's just as easy as the latest statement :-)

• Q: Nice, but how do I set up a learn buffer as a "normal human" person?
• A: To easyfy your steps towards creating a learn buffer, there's now a helper script available installed into PREFIX-OF-GTRANSLATOR-INSTALLATION/share/gtranslator/scripts/build-gtranslator-learn-buffer.sh and in CVS/in the tarball under gtranslator/data/scripts/build-gtranslator-learn-buffer.sh; you should simply run it in a directory beneath which the po files for your language are quite often occuring, e.g. a central CVS checkout directory or a central directory with many translated po files beneath it.
  
  The script itself will ask you for details and "lead" you towards a learn buffer build with the po files found beneath the current directory from which the script was run. Besides this, there's always the "manual" way via the command line gtranslator -l PO_FILE_WITH_THE_CONTENTS_AND_TRANSLATIONS_TO_LEARN for single po files which should be learned.

• Q: And where is this learn buffer stored on my disk and which format does it use?
• A: It's your personal learn buffer, therefore it is in your personal home directory under ~/.gtranslator/umtf/ as an UMTF file per default as ~/.gtranslator/umtf/personal-learn-buffer.xml - UMTF is a gzip'd XML format & a quite effective translation memory format currently used by gtranslator. For more details on this format, simply contact me: Fatih Demir <kabalak@kabalak.net> or look at our UMTF pages here.

• Q: How did the querying mechanism change?
• A: In previous releases of gtranslator (means: before R 0.39.2 in CVS and R 0.40 on the official side of things) used a crapped way to use the gettext functions from glibc to lookup any previous translations in already existing gettext translation domains (=installed .mo files); now the query functionality is based upon the learn buffer and queries the learn buffer -- therefore it's now much more straight, better, faster and: it WORKS after you've set up a quite normal-sized learn buffer with gtranslator.

• Q: I get a message "Another instance of gtranslator has already opened the file" and can't start gtranslator! Why and how to deal with that?
• A: This message informs you just that gtranslator is (or at least thinks) that another instance of gtranslator is trying to opening the same po file at the same time -- opening the same po file twice in different gtranslator instances is a bad situation as you might have guessed; to avoid this gtranslator warns you with this message and doesn't start up with the named po file.
  
  This message does unfortunately also come up very often after gtranslator crashed with the po file you're now trying to open after it crashed within the po file you're just trying to re-open. This is something not wanted by us and we're looking how to solve this problematic issue but normally this warning is senseful and a good thing to do. To gain "access" to this po file you do not need to reboot your computer but you need just to close gtranslator and to start it up again; then it works in the case of the crash with the same po file.

• Q: Why are there colorschemes everywhere 'round, help me, where did they came from, heeeelp!
• A: They're a creation of my mind ;-) Huh, well, they're a way to change all syntax colors within gtranslator's text edit windows and the colors of the HTML page put out by the HTMLizing functions in R 0.40+; you can simply change the colors via a simple colorscheme change from the preferences dialog or via the direct selection menu for the colorschemes under the "Settings" main menu area. Some colorschemes are delivered with gtranslator and you can also create and test your own colorschemes as colorschemes are plain XML files with a special format you can see from one of the default colorschemes; you can put your own or foreignly created colorschemes into ~/.gtranslator/colorschemes and gtranslator will pick it up into it's menus on the next starting of gtranslator.

• Q: The output of the HTMLizing function is now (R 0.40+) returning a much more colorful output, why?
• A: As stated above with the release 0.40 the colors for the HTML page are now also taken from the currently active colorscheme -- the colorscheme which was selected and active the last time gtranslator had been exitted.

• Q: I want to translate gtranslator into a new language; where can I get the gtranslator.pot file?
• A: Quite easy: just contact me (Fatih Demir) per Mail and I'll send you the current and accurate pot file to work for your language :-)
  

• Q: Will gtranslator support enhanced translation memories (in formats like TMX/OpenTag)?
• A: Surely it will; TMX and OpenTag support should be really done for it; you can await something like exporting/importing from/to these formats without any big probs from our native translation memory format UMTF - the native format for the learn buffer of gtranslator will be UMTF for the long future which is quite enhanced and good for our working environment and cases.

• Q: I do get errors like "timeout waiting for ispell process" or crashs due to spell checking. Why?
• A: You've got to specify your language for the spell checking in the preferences on the spell checking notebook page -- especially aspell-fake-ispell users need to set up a personal special language dict (even for english) in their preferences; after this things will work.

• Q: Will gtranslator make me sexy?
• A: No, even gtranslator can't perform miracles ;-)