[Freecats-Dev] About RWS Group Tools (Rainbow) and Yves Savourel

[Kemper DOC (Nerim)]

Hi all,

Even though some of us talked about Yves Savourel since some time, a
well-known CAT and XML expert - and also a Breton, incidentally ;-) none of
us did contact him. Well, until now.

FYI, here is the feedback I sent to RWS, the Boulder-based company where he
happens to work. I'll CC Yves' personal answer within minutes.

For those who don't know about RWS tools: they are very useful to prepare
some file formats for translation. For instance, when translating HTML files
with Wordfast or Word/Trados (if you dislike Tag Editor), they can be very
handy.

Wordfast also has a similar companion tool, PlusTools, but it's not its
editor's main development focus, and it's not entirely stable - yet [Ouch' -
Not on the Head, Yves, Please]
(i.e. lots of people use it and like it, a few ones still have problems with
it from time to time, so RWS Tools happens to be a viable alternative).

More generally, I don't want to divert our short-term efforts from a TM
server, but I suggest we all begin thinking about the best way to deal with
conversion filters. Here are our present findings:

- Use a X-HTML based, bilingual format (either XLIFF, Oasis' emerging
standard, OR a more basic stuff, since we DON'T want to deal with
"intelligent" XML parsing, we only want to:
        tag & translate strings
        play nicely with internal (formatting) tags
        leave external (structure) tags untouched

- Provide compatibility with Open Office's Writer native file format, if
only to benefit from THEIR conversion filters - so in fact, our own
bilingual format must be as close as possible from Writer's XML-based
format.

- So, what we would need is a GPL toolbox that would be as "generic" and
well-documented as possible in order to ease adding lots of file formats.

RWS tools is a good example of what could be done.

Another set of tools is Ando Tools http://www.geocities.com/pavelatando/
from Pavel Soukeník (address@hidden), published under the GPL. Even though
they were developed as MS Word macros, they might be ported once we choose a
"better" toolbox (possibly with Python or any other portable solution). I'm
going to try contacting him, even though somebody on Wordfast's discussion
list today worried about not hearing from him since some time.


Cheers,

Henri

-----Message d'origine-----
De: Chris Raulf [mailto:address@hidden
Date: jeudi 19 juin 2003 17:40
À: address@hidden
Cc: 'Yves Savourel'
Objet: RE: RWS Group Tools


Henri,
Thanks for your comments - I'll also forward them to Yves Savourel, the
creator of the tools.
Regards,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Henri Chorand [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 9:37 AM
To: Chris Raulf
Subject: RE: RWS Group Tools


Hi,

> We hope you will find our tools and freeware helpful
> and welcome any feedback.

I find them quite useful (and reliable). I hope new file formats will be
added, for instance WinHelp, HTML Help or Java resource files.

If RWS tools were to be provided under a GPL license or similar, I
believe a number of colleagues and I would take the time and effort to
see how to work on this by ourselves, thus enhancing them further for
the benefit of the whole community. Whatever RWS' choice, I will respect
it and comply to it, of course.


Best regards,

Henri Chorand
Manager

Kemper DOC   Documentation Engineering
Documentation - Translation - Localization - Referencing

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Web   www.kemperdoc.com
Tel. +33 298 533 482
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