#51 Reduce language file size

[Kimmo Varis]

Currently our language files are around 400 KB each. With 20 of them, this is just waste of space.

We need to find out why lang files are so big and what we can do to reduce their size.

[Gal Hammer]

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I started to write a utility which create these language files from .po files. I'll try to find it.

[Tim Gerundt]

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> We need to find out why lang files are so big and what we can do to reduce
> their size.

I think one step must be the todo item #1447842 "Remove bitmap resources from lang files":
http://winmerge.org/todo/1447842

> I started to write a utility which create these language files from .po
> files. I'll try to find it.

Wow, that would a huge step to a better translation process! The .po files should be easier to translate for the users as the .rc files.

[Kimmo Varis]

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Ok, after Tim's patches we are now in around 190-200 KB for each lang file (SVN rev 4198). Very good! So lowering priority. This already reduced WinMerge full installation size by 4 MB!

>> I started to write a utility which create these language files from .po
>> files. I'll try to find it.
>
> Wow, that would a huge step to a better translation process! The .po files
> should be easier to translate for the users as the .rc files.

Dialogs are the problem, we'll need some custom code to dynamically switch text in them. I think WinCVS has that kind of system in use. But it requires re-writing a lot of our GUI code. And also converting all .rc files to .po files... Not an easy task.

[Kimmo Varis]

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Assigning to Tim.

In 2.7.3.2 lang files reduced again, being now around 100 KB. Maybe we can still do better, but it is already a very good size decrease!

[Kimmo Varis]

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I'm closing this as I'm perfectly happy with current situation!