zoot

Sure, I'm not suggesting it should be a considered a showstopper. Just that, IMO, Don made a valid point, even though he maybe didn't document it quite well enough. Until he or someone else does come up with more solid documentation, we'll just take it easy.

Can't please everybody, but if you don't lose much by it, you can try to piss off the fewest

If you pick the subset of Germans who find swastikas uncontroversial, and check how many of them find swastikas controversial, you will clearly arrive at the number nil. That seems a bit disingenuous, though, since we had one German on the forum who did find it offensive, as well as FeXoR who at least recognized that such people exist. I personally don't have any reason to believe that these latter two are "less authentic" Germans than anyone who may post on YouTube. No, because that is how Jews self-identify. It's similar to how it will be uncontroversial to say "African American", because that is how African Americans identify, while the fabled n-word is not.

The Afrikaans Wikipedia wouldn't be my first choice for a neutral source on South Africa, if you know what I mean If it is extremely important to use a word like "bantu", I agree, this is not something that should stop a game from doing so. But like in the swastika discussion, it's like there is an undertone of "these minority people shouldn't be telling us what to do". I don't really perceive anyone telling anyone what to do - it's more like, what is the point in offending people if it can be avoided? IMO, if a work of art steps many people (Germans, black South Africans ... who's next?) on the toes, not to make any kind of point (other than maybe "we don't care about you"), but just for the heck of it, it ends up seeming coarse and a bit crude. Though, opinions obviously vary.

In many cases, I think there is an EULA-like text stating something to that effect. That wasn't really my point, though. I agree that permission can be implied. But this permission is not necessarily implied just because the content is on a website. It will depend on the nature of the website. (Of course, it would be very difficult to argue that the permission is not implied on a website like, say, cnn.com. But technically it is still something a sufficiently motivated lawyer could have a back-and-forth over with the judge.)

Sorry, that is not true. It is the act of copying that is regulated, not just the act of distributing the copy. But as I said, it is so technical that no one is likely to pursue it (including the judge).

You are right that in the most extreme cases it is not enforced. Like, when you browse a web page, you actually copy that web page to your computer, so that may technically be a violation. No one would ever pursue a case over that, though. But the moment you pass something you copied on to someone else, you are quickly moving into dangerous territory - big copyright holders (Disney, Universal etc.) in particular can be very aggressive about asserting their rights in that case. Since 0 A.D. is a game that is distributed to potentially thousands of people, we would potentially be perpetrating thousands of such acts of illegally copying content to someone else, if we accidentally included some content without solid permission from the copyright holder. So that is something we need to be pretty careful about, IMO. I'm not sure what you are referring to here? I looked at the site, I don't see any obvious violations. But as sander17 suggests, there are exceptions to the copyright law that a site like 9gag may use. None of those apply to us, though. Things you prepare for school typically won't be passed on to other people, so copyright holders are highly unlikely to assert their rights in that case. And as sander17 suggests, many countries have so-called "fair use" exceptions in their copyright law that expressly permits the kind of limited use for educational purposes you are talking about. This depends on subject, I would say. I wouldn't be suprised if a sufficiently crazy lawyer would be able to win such a case under certain circumstances. But for some very common objects (like a fork), it might be difficult to establish that the picture was really the source of the model. (Textures are a completely different story, of course. An UV map copied directly from a copyrighted image without permission would be an open-and-shut case of copyright infringement.)

Seems like something that might be done on a map-by-map basis with triggers. I wouldn't want it for standard play.

For what it's worth, I agree: authentic flora and fauna adds to the sense that the game is a serious production, and not just some toy. (But for the love of God, do not remove any of Micket's models from the game )

Any artistic work is copyrighted by default per the Berne Convention. So unless explicitly marked as being under a CC-BY-SA compatible license, we can't use them (asking for special permission can work, but is not ideal).

In the sample screenshot you show, I doubt it would help much. You would get some pottery props and so on on the ground, but the main building mesh would still 'stick out' in the air.

If that is something we want to combat, we should do it on the basis of factual measurements, not simple conjecture. Since gettext is a tried and true solution, with more than two decades of optimization in the bag, that is by far the most obvious choice, and what we ought to go with for an initial implementation. If anyone can then subsequently improve upon the performance of that implementation, and present factual evidence in support of that, then making those changes may be worth considering.

I'm not advocating that online solutions are the only solution. Just that with PO files you have the option, along with many other tools that support the format. But at least on Launchpad, you have the option to upload a PO you made (and I believe Transifex offers the same). So it is not really choice between online or offline editors - they work together. One thing they certainly don't do, though, is support some custom format we come up with.

I won't rule out that someone has the level of dedication to be that person. But the process seems very clunky and error prone to me, compared to the streamlined workflow of services like Transifex and Launchpad Translations.

Hundreds and hundreds of translators will disagree.

How would the translated .po or .txt be committed to SVN, if not by copying it from the translator? Would they send their entire harddrive by carrier pigeon?

What data would you cache? I can't readily imagine what the process would be. Copying the POs back and forth manually? As long as I don't have to do it, I guess I can't stop you

Not really. As you said, it would still be slower than binary. If we make it excessively hard, obviously they won't. The end result will just be undermaintained and unfinished translations.

If we use caching on-the-fly conversion from text to binary, it would still be moddable. (Regardless of which 'catalog' format is selected.) Though I suppose that would not be compatible with tinygettext.

I wasn't referring so much to the format of the file as to its contents. POs are normally converted to the binary MO format anyway, which is more tightly packed than the format you are suggesting. Did you notice how much functionality you are throwing out by using the allegedly simpler custom format? I'm just trying to point out that the options seem to be either something on the level of complexity I suggested, the IMO strongly neutered format you suggested, or standard PO. I would prefer the latter, but it's always a good idea to at least take note of the alternatives.

If this is a concern, can't we include the POT file* in the game data, which can then be loaded "in one go" into a map at startup; when a game string is later found in an XML file, the string is translated into an address in the map, which is stored in the appropriate data structure in memory; this address can then be used to lookup the string to invoke gettext on - won't that accomplish the same thing? If I understand you correctly, it seems to be more of a concern with how gettext is invoked than with gettext itself. (* The POT file is a collection of all the source strings that have been marked for translation in the source code and data.)

What would stop someone from using Notepad++ with PO files?

I look forward to seeing a certified IP lawyer sign off on it

"Saying" that the game falls under one of the exceptions doesn't make it true. It's all about whether a court would believe it. IMO, there is not a case for fair use here. Show me a teacher who would use TLA in their classes. Or a researcher who would write an academic paper about it. It just isn't believable that these purposes are any major part of what TLA is.