FrugalPup v41, very flexible Puppy frugal installer, supporting i18n

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak, thanks.

[gyrog]

FrugalPup v39b1 is available.

FrugalPup 39b1, DiskPup 39b1, StickPup 39b1 and f2StickPup 39b1 - Puppy frugal installer.

'frugalpup_39b1.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-39b1.pet'(3 MiB) and 'frugalpup_lang_fr-39b1.pet'(20 KiB) can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This is the first version of FrugalPup to support translation (gettext).
It is a beta version 1, hence 39b1.
The plan is to sort things out with as many beta versions as necessary, and release production as v40.

This FrugalPup inserts a "plang=" boot parameter to Grub2 boot entries if "$LANG" is defined in the running Puppy.

The 'frugalpup_lang_fr-39b1.pet' is an example translation to French.
It was done using the Google translate service, so I do not vouch for the quality of the French.

Issues:

1. The French translation is frequently longer than the original English, so some dialogs look worse.
So I will be playing around with some dialogs, seeing how dynamic I can get yad to be.

2. Translating the text of the dialogs is ok, but there's also the html help pages.
So as well as '/usr/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/frugalpup.mo',
'frugalpup_lang_fr-39b1.pet' contains an example of providing translated html help pages in '/usr/local/frugalpup/doc/fr/'.

[gyrog]

My current thinking on the problem of translations not wrapping nicely is:
I will refrain from defining the width of any dialog, although I might define the sometimes feel the need to define the height.
I will gettext whole sentences, and if yad does not wrap them nicely, "\n" characters in the translations.
As a result of the above, the English does not always wrap nicely, so there will be a '/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/frugalpup.mo' to provide any necessary extra "\n" characters. (Yes I've tried this, and it works.)

This means I will be re-assessing the gettext calls in all the scripts, I don't expect this to change many translation texts.
Hmm... I might even try combining each of the translated sentences together as a "normal" paragraph, and see how yad copes.

There is still another issue with some dialog's.
A good example is the "Source type" dialog in DiskPup, f2StickPup, StickPup, and the Puppy facility of FrugalPup itself.
The problem is that the only text on the screen is used by the code to know the type of source,
if the words displayed as selection items are translated, the code won't work, but in the absence of any translated text,
a person who is not familar with English would have difficulty.
The result is that the dialog has to change, I will probably add a third column, a description, which will be available for translation.
Something like the following:

source-type.png (17.21 KiB) Viewed 2588 times

[thinkpadfreak]

Issues:

1. The French translation is frequently longer than the original English, so some dialogs look worse.
So I will be playing around with some dialogs, seeing how dynamic I can get yad to be.

I usually try to keep the Japanese translation about the length of the original English.
I hope native speakers of any language know how to express the contents briefly so that translated sentences may not be much longer than the original.

if the words displayed as selection items are translated, the code won't work, but in the absence of any translated text,
a person who is not familiar with English would have difficulty.

I hope people who use computers have some knowledge of English words related to computers, but the addition of translated text will be helpful.

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak , thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

[fredx181]

The result is that the dialog has to change, I will probably add a third column, a description, which will be available for translation.

Simple trick with yad (with --list) can be to add a column with the desired string to output (without translation needed) , e.g. as second column, make it hide: --hide-column=2 but also make print that column --print-column=2 (and it will not show in the dialog, but does output the choice) (hopefully this is understandable enough ).

[gyrog]

Simple trick with yad (with --list) can be to add a column with the desired string to output (without translation needed) , e.g. as second column, make it hide: --hide-column=2 but also make print that column --print-column=2 (and it will not show in the dialog, but does output the choice) (hopefully this is understandable enough ).

Thanks for the suggestion.
I understand, that is the other option, unless the English gets displayed as data on another screen, since it becomes data to the code, and I can't remember if it does.
I could check the code, but I'm a lazy bloke, and I've already coded the option I mentioned.

I guess I'm not so worried about there still being some English on the screen, given @thinkpadfreak's comments.
But if some folk want to translate everything on the screen, then I can implement your suggestion.
Although I have no way of providing translation options for the internals of the yad select file/directory dialog,
only the message at the top and the buttons at the bottom, but not anything in between e.g. the "Create Folder" button.

Note: I am trying to make all text available for translation, even if some of it never gets used.

[fredx181]

@gyrog I meant something like this (in case misunderstanding):

Code: Select all

CHOICE=$(yad --list \
    --title="FrugalPup-puppyfiles" --height 270 --width 400 \
    --text=" Select the source type  " \
    --radiolist --center --borders 5 --no-headers --print-column=2 \
    --column="Pick" --column="Option" --column="Name" --column="Description" --hide-column 2 \
    "TRUE" "ISO" "iso" "A .iso file" \
    "FALSE" "ZIP" "zip" "A .zip file" \
    "FALSE" "DIRECTORY" "directory" "A local directory" \
    "FALSE" "THIS" "this" "This Puppy")
    [ $? -ne 0 ] && exit
echo "$CHOICE"
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# below won't work as is, needs editing
if [ "$CHOICE" = "ISO|" ]; then
...
elif ...
...
fi

Where the second column is hidden in the dialog, but the result is that the second column text will be the output e.g. ISO (if "A .iso file" is chosen).
So that way keeping the output (from second column) english and the others you can add gettext code for translation.

[gyrog]

@fredx181, thanks for taking the time to provide the example code.
I do get it.
But I am almost finished v39b2, and I had already implemented the other option as part of v39b2.
Although I do like the description without the ", i.e. .iso instead of ".iso".

I would have omitted your column 2, but still hidden and printed the now column 2,
so the user would see only the radio-button and the translated description.

If I could define a default item, without the radio-buttons, I would consider showing just the description.

[gyrog]

FrugalPup v39b2 is available.

FrugalPup 39b2, DiskPup 39b2, StickPup 39b2 and f2StickPup 39b2 - Puppy frugal installer.

'frugalpup_39b2.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-39b2.pet'(3 MiB) can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This is beta version 2 of FrugalPup v39 supporting translation (gettext).

This FrugalPup attempts to deal with the difference in length of a translation, by ommitting the yad "width=" paramter on as many dialogs as possible, although some dialogs still have a "width=" parameter to try to defeat yad's automatic wrapping.

It also trys to provide whole sentences for translation, rather than a line by line approach.
Since many sentences are too long, they include "\\n" sequences to produce line-breaks.
Of course a translator can modify the position and number of "\\n" sequences in the translation.

Many dialogs in FrugalPup, (and it's co-utilities), consist of 3 parts:
A text message at the top.
A data portion in the middle.
And buttons on the bottom.
The width of a yad dialog is significantly dependent on the width of the text message.
I changed the English text message for the "Source type" dialog, just to provide more width to the dialog, without resorting to a yad "width=" parameter.
(This will work up to the point where yad automatic wrapping kicks in.)

This version also includes modified versions of some dialogs, to help with translation.
e.g. the "Source type" dialog, has translateable descriptions added to each line.
Some visual changes have been made to "partition selection" dialogs to provide more room, and to make them more consistent.
I have not made the column headings availabe for translation, as they are mostly there to provide spacing to the data.
(If you don't display the column headings, you don't get the spacing.)

[gyrog]

I do not have any more ideas on how to improve this yad based FrugalPup.
So, unless I get some suggestions, i will probably release this one as FrugalPup v39.
(Might be changes to the "Source type" dialog.)

This represents a change of plan.
I'm not completely happy with the way yad displays some stuff when using my test French translation.
I'm currently working on creating binary programs, that use Gtk directly.
I'm programming in the Gnome language vala, and the results look good.
My plan is to release FrugalPup v40 using this technique for displaying dialogs, (sometime).

[thinkpadfreak]

I downloaded frugalpup-39b1.pet and frugalpup-39b2.pet, and looked into them.

I notice some of the scripts don't have the two lines:

Code: Select all

export TEXTDOMAIN=frugalpup
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=UTF-8

Those lines need to be included in each script. And single quotation marks are not needed.
When I first ran MoManager, it did not pick up the frugalpup.mo which I had created before.
After I deleted the single quotation marks, MoManager picked up the frugalpup.mo.

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak, thanks for the response.

I've had the problem of a frugalpup.mo with single quotes not woking, but did once the single quotes were removed from the filename.
I had no idea that I was causing the problem with the single quotes at the top of the "frugalpup" script.
But an easy fix.

My excuse for not including those 2 definitions in all the scripts, is that I noticed that scripts that ran as children of a script that included thsose 2 lines inherited those enviroment variables.
But again it's an easy fix just to be sure.

I can not run MoManager, it says it's only for non English speaking folk to translate English into their native language.
With a LANG=en_AU.UTF-8 I don't qualify.
But I've been able to generate a "messages.po" file that covers all the scripts with:

Code: Select all

xgettext -L shell frugalpup-common frugalpup frugalpup-settings frugalpup-puppyfiles frugalpup-bootfiles frugalpup-bootcd frugalpup-dopupdir frugalpup-dobootpart frugalpup-bootentry diskpup f2stickpup stickpup

then I edited "messages.po" to include "msgstr" strings in French using free online translation services, and then ran

Code: Select all

msgfmt --check -o frugalpup.mo  messages.po

This appeared to work.

Any how I will release a 39b3 version that includes the 2 definitions in every file that includes code.

[gyrog]

FrugalPup v39b3 is available.

FrugalPup 39b3, DiskPup 39b3, StickPup 39b3 and f2StickPup 39b3 - Puppy frugal installer.

'frugalpup_39b3.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-39b3.pet'(3 MiB) can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This is beta version 3 of FrugalPup v39 supporting translation (gettext).

The only change is the inclusion of:

Code: Select all

export TEXTDOMAIN=frugalpup
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=UTF-8

at the begining of every script, and an include that contains code.

[thinkpadfreak]

Thanks for your efforts to internationalize frugalpup. I downloaded frugalpup-39b3.pet.

I have created frugalpup.mo (ja). It is a beta version, which needs further testing in how dialog screens will look.

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak, I downloaded your frugalpup.mo and placed it in '/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/'.
Then ran FrugalPup v39b3, and tried a few screens. It looked ok, but then each of the Japanese characters displayed as the same small square blob on my screen. So really not much of a test. But I can attest it does work, including the markup, e.g. the red warning message on the main screen.

[thinkpadfreak]

I downloaded your frugalpup.mo and placed it in '/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/'.
Then ran FrugalPup v39b3, and tried a few screens. It looked ok, but then each of the Japanese characters displayed as the same small square blob on my screen.

That is an interesting way of testing.
You can install Japanese fonts like vlgothic or noto-cjk, if you like. The former is a Japanese font, and the latter includes Chinese characters and Korean characters in addition to Japanese characters, its size being very large.

I tried various installs using the frugalpup utilities, and modified frugalpup.mo (ja).

Edit:
I modified the 230521 version a little. So frugalpup_mo-ja-230521A.tar.gz is the latest.

[thinkpadfreak]

I booted S15Pup64 from a usb stick set up with frugalpup.

The following are my observations:

Setting the language as ja_JP.UTF-8 with the kernel boot parameter, I am afraid, will often lead to inconvenience. When the system does not have a Japanese font, some of the menus and messages will become unreadable.

I am afraid that setting the keyboard as jp106 is invalid, probably because "jp Japanese" is specified in recent puppies. "jp106" is not found in the list of quick setup.
In the xorg.conf of recent puppies, "XkbModel" is "pc104" and "XkbLayout" is "jp."

TZ=JST-9 will not work, either. There is no "JST-9" in the list of quick setup. We use "Asia/Tokyo."

Edit:
I mean a case like this.
I am using S15Pup64, which has been localized with a Japanese language pack. The language pack includes Japanese fonts.
I installed this puppy to a usb stick with frugalpup.
When I boot from the usb stick, S15Pup64 does not have the language pack installed. So ...

[gyrog]

I am using S15Pup64, which has been localized with a Japanese language pack. The language pack includes Japanese fonts.
I installed this puppy to a usb stick with frugalpup.
When I boot from the usb stick, S15Pup64 does not have the language pack installed. So ...

How do you install a language pack?
What is used as the source?

How did you install S15Pup64 on the usb stick, using "StickPup", "f2StickPup", "DiskPup" or "FrugalPup->Puppy" + "FrugalPup->Boot"?

FrugalPup always installs a Puppy as it was released i.e. the .sfs files, initrd.gz and vmlinuz,
even if you choose "FrugalPup->Puppy->this".
Doing this only defines the source directory for extracting the Puppy release files.
Anything installed in the source Puppy as a .pet, is ignored.

If the generated "TZ" parameter on the grub.cfg file is a problem, delete it.

[gyrog]

TZ=JST-9 will not work, either. There is no "JST-9" in the list of quick setup. We use "Asia/Tokyo."

There is also no TZ=AEST-10 in the list of quick setup, but that is the correct TZ specifiication for my location.
( In the list I choose "Australia/Brisbane", which defines the same time zone as TZ=AEST-10.)
TZ=JST-9 should result in the same time zone as selecting "Asia/Tokyo" in the list.

[thinkpadfreak]

How do you install a language pack?
What is used as the source?

How did you install S15Pup64 on the usb stick, using "StickPup", "f2StickPup", "DiskPup" or "FrugalPup->Puppy" + "FrugalPup->Boot"?

I created the language pack (a pet package), and I publish it in the Puppy Linux Japanese Forum.
https://sakurapup.com/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3606

I used frugalpup->boot.

The following is the kernel line:

Code: Select all

linux /s15pup64/vmlinuz net.ifnames=0 pmedia=usbflash pdrv=dos7b0aa173 psubdir=/s15pup64 pfix=fsck,fsckp plang=ja_JP.UTF-8 TZ=JST-9

I think it was generated automatically. I did not specify anything.

And the attached picture shows the desktop of S15Pup64 which booted from the usb stick.
I am not surprised to see it, because I understand what has happened. But a beginner may be somewhat surprised.
Some of the menus and messages, which have a Japanese translation, are not readable.

Anyway the result of the installation is not critical at all. We can set up the items in QuickSetup again, after we install the language pack.

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak,
The "linux" boot line was generated by FrugalPup.

I suspect that the things go a little odd because the language has been set with the "plang=ja_JP.UTF-8" boot parameter.
(That value was picked up from the LANG environment variable on your machine when you ran FrugalPup.)

Here's a suggestion, convert your Japanese language pack into a ".sfs" instead of a ".pet".
Then rename it to be one of the ?drv...sfs that will be automatically loaded by Puppy, e.g. ydrv_s15pup64_22.12.sfs or bdrv_s15pup64_22.12.sfs, and place it in your s15pup64 install directory.
Then use "FrugalPup->Puppy->this" to install the Puppy files on the stick + "FrugalPup->Boot" to install grub2.
This should work since FrugalPup copies all ".sfs" files from the source into the new install directory.
Then the s15pup64 on the usb stick should automatically load the "ydrv...sfs/bdrv...sfs" during boot.

Note: Loading the ".sfs" file with sfs_load will not help, since the information saying it should be loaded, is in the savefolder/savefile and will be ignored like the contents of any installed ".pet".

[gyrog]

You could also use "FrugalPup->Pupp->directory" to copy the Puppy files.

[thinkpadfreak]

Here's a suggestion, convert your Japanese language pack into a ".sfs" instead of a ".pet".

I prefer using a pet package, because it can contain install scripts. Simply turning it into an sfs such as adrv sfs will not work. But it is not impossible to use adrv sfs as a language pack.

We don't expect that an installer will set the "plang" parameter. Other installers don't do that. But if appending the parameter is a feature of frugalpup, I will accept it.

X window takes over the locale ja_JP.UTF-8 which the kernel boot parameter specifies. but the keyboard layout and the time zone are not taken over. I suspect that "modern" puppies are different from Xenialpup or earlier.

[gyrog]

We don't expect that an installer will set the "plang" parameter. Other installers don't do that. But if appending the parameter is a feature of frugalpup, I will accept it.

The "plang=" parameter is now added by FrugalPup, so that translated 'init' is possible.
i.e. the messages that scroll up the screen when you boot. I thought that this would be particularly useful with error messages when 'init' fails.
BUT, I can easily remove it.

I'll release a v39b4 without it.

[gyrog]

Just to clarify;
The TZ parameter on the end of "linux" lines in grub.cfg, do not make any difference to the default value that appears in QuickSetup.
They are generated from data connected to the timezone selected in QuickSetup in the Puppy doing the install.
They are there to make the time during init the same as it will be in the running system.
The fsck of ext4 filesystems is liable to give warning messges about times withiin the filesystem being in the future, if there is a mismatch.

[gyrog]

rugalPup v39b4 is available.

FrugalPup 39b4, DiskPup 39b4, StickPup 39b4 and f2StickPup 39b4 - Puppy frugal installer.

'frugalpup_39b4.sfs'(3 MiB) or 'frugalpup-39b4.pet'(3 MiB) can be downloaded from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rdyc5l ... /frugalpup.

This is beta version 4 of FrugalPup v39 supporting translation (gettext).

Changes:

1. No longer generates a "plang=" boot parameter.

2. The FrugalPup version is no longer available for translation.

3. frugalpup-common no longer contains:
export TEXTDOMAIN=frugalpup
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=UTF-8
It doesn't get executed, just included in every other script.

4. Changes to which files get copied by frugalpup-dobootdir.
Now includes local-initrd.gz and DRV_SPECS.
Of course this will make no difference when installing .iso or .zip release files.

[thinkpadfreak]

Thanks for the version 39b4.

I modified (improved) frugalpup.mo (ja).
Translations are affected by the context. I looked at various dialog screens and thought that translating a sentence word by word is not enough. Automatic translation by google, etc will be far from satisfactory.

[gyrog]

@thinkpadfreak, thanks for the translation.

Unfortunately using the Jananese .mo file on my computer doesn't mean much, it does not have the fonts.

As to automatic translation, I have difficulty in accessing how good they are, due to my lack of appropriate fluency in any non-English language.

I do wonder if they might be better than no translation, in the absence of a translator like yourself.
Although to do a proper job it probably needs a human translator, to at least review/edit the result.

[thinkpadfreak]

Although to do a proper job it probably needs a human translator, to at least review/edit the result.

I agree.

I think many French people and German people, for example, understand English.
Though learning English is compulsory to junior high school level in Japan, English can be an obstacle to Japanese people, because Japanese and English are very different.

I hope Japanese people who hesitate to use frugalpup will use it if it has Japanese translation.