Languages MISSING in DarkTable, manual/blog entries/GitHub misleading, NO POLISH language support

Hello, after 2 hours of reinstalling Darktable 4.0 and 4.0.1 (from mainpage and GitHub) and rereading blog entries on darktable 4.0: 3763 Days Later | darktable, manual, and checking files on GitHub (which LIST pl.po as existing there as `PL.PO PL Translation (#12597) and it looks like part of source code?) I still cannot get Polish to work on end users’ laptop.

Please advise what’s going on and/or how to best bring it up to dev team, this is super misleading. I got an elderly user trying to get something to replace Adobe software and they insist this is the software they want to use, that this will work, and they were assured it IS available in Polish.

As I don’t specialize in photography & related software I can only go with info I’m supplied with, and ALL INFO AVAILABLE ON DARKTABLE.ORG states that language should be in? I’m on day 2, and had to pull installer for 4.0 via wayback machine, and can’t find any older ones to see if the translation was available in older ones.

Please help? Is there an external translations patch?

As discussed on IRC, Polish is not available in 4.0.0 or 4.0.1. We’re not a commercial operation and are dependent on volunteers providing translations, which get removed prior to the release if any language is incomplete. We’re also dependent on volunteers to keep the website up-to-date and the blog post you reference is talking about the user manual, not the software. Agreed it could be slightly better worded but at worst it’s slightly ambiguous, perhaps a full stop that could have been a comma.

Unless you build it yourself I don’t think there’s a way to add translations back in.

translation has to be done by someone:

  1. Download the source code GitHub - darktable-org/darktable: darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer
    2.with Poedit, open pl.po that you will find in the folder po.
  2. In Poedit, update/sync pl.po with darktable.pot
  3. In Poedit, generate a mo file. It will be named pl.mo
  4. Exit Poedit. Now you will need to rename pl.mo to darktable.mo
  5. Move darktable.mo to the right folder.
    The Swedish folder in Windows is
    C:\Program Files\darktable\share\locale\sv\LC_MESSAGES

Probably the Polish one is C:\Program Files\darktable\share\locale\pl\LC_MESSAGES

In Ubuntu, the file path to the Swedish folder is /usr/share/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES

With Poedit, you will also be able to translate darktable yourself and improve the Polish translation.

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Its not about “someone has to do it” but “software info on official website says software available in language X”.

I’m not a native English speaker, and just to make sure, I had native US/UK/Scottish English speakers check it with me to make certain Im not misreading stuff and they say Im not so I feel the site info is, at best, misleading the way it is right now.

Afaik, it would be helpful if site info was updated, or dev team added at least a screencap of languages available and list it on page under “now available in following languages” & put a division between “translated manuals” and “software available in languages XYZ”

Thank you!
If I manage to find a friend that has experience with Poedit and can do this I’ll ask them to look at it with me :smiley: Never used Poedit before, I just happen to have internet connection and can DL/install programs for older folks.

So, just to confirm as this is my first time ever with nonWindows software like this, does that mean the translation in the source files is actually there, just not usable and just not turned on/not added in a working way? This is super confusing.

The developers work on the “master” branch of the git repository, which contains all translations at varying states of completeness alongside new code features. While development is underway, anyone is free to provide updates to those translations, but because new English strings are being added all the time those translations need to be kept up-to-date.

When we put together the release we have a “string freeze” a few weeks before the release date, after which we no longer change the English strings, to give translators time to finish translations.

Finally, when we come to put together the release, we branch the code (into a “release” branch, currently “4.0.x”). Because we don’t want to release software with mixed languages (e.g. some strings in English and some in Polish) we remove any incomplete translations from the release branch before creating the release build and they are no longer available for anyone building that release. I guess you could manually add the PO file back in (from the master branch) and rebuild, but you would get a mixed EN/PL interface.

It’s about. A language need to be maintained to follow releases and there’s few translator (one as I see for polish language that update it sometimes but not often). A language is not kept in a release if remains a lot untranslated strings. And on new releases, there’s always new strings to translate or update.
Some languages had been removed because no more maintained or too much translations to do remaining, like polish one.

Seeing that it’s available in official website just means that the list had not been updated. darktable remains a software made by people freely in their free time, so sometimes thing had been forgotten.

Download Poedit and check it out. It is a simple software.
When you have created darktable.mo you can share the file with other Polish speaking darktable users.

All languages are also available in the master version of darktable, but I recommend to use the stable one.

“software info on official website says software available in language X” - AFAIK darktable.org doesn’t contain that statement.

You referenced: “The latest version of the user manual is here. Ukrainian and Polish translations are currently available and we expect to add more over the coming months.”

You can find exactly that mentioned polish translation of the manual (an no more was indicated by that phrase) here:
https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/pl/

The release page is also very precise, which translations for the software are available see: Release darktable 4.0.1 released · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub

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Features page on darktable.org (I suppose @Rabbit mad his statement regarding that one) precise that polish language is available (this page is outdated): features | darktable

@Rabbit: as @MStraeten explains well, the right place is release notes of a release, not general page where update could be forgotten (like features page).

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Thanks @Nilvus. I’ve submitted a pull request to change that features page as I agree it’s misleading.

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