Hello Bill,

> Localisation is planned for version 2. There is no localisation as yet,
> as to be honest I know nothing about using it nor programming for it !
> So it is still something I need to learn how to do for later versions.

Localisation is not very difficult : if you want I can explain it to you
privately, it's only a matter of extracting every string you want to be
localisable into a text file assiging it an ID, then in your code instead
of (for example)

printf("Hello World\n");

you would write something like

printf( GetString(MSG_HELLO_WORLD) );

> DU uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts so I would assume that they would
> need to be able to be localised to match the language used too.

There is some discussion on the subject and there two schools : either
shortcut are the same for every language (think Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V for example),
either shortcut are localisable. I guess that in first version shortcuts
can stay non localisable.

> I would certainly welcome as many catalogue translators as possible for
> any language that can be supported. Unfortunately at the moment I would
> not know what to do with a catalogue file. Are there any experts on this
> list that can advise on how to localise code ?

If you want I can try to guide you for this.

> The online manual is quite huge, and needs a great deal of updating in
> English let alone other languages. Anyone wanting to help translate it,
> would be welcomed but it would not be an easy task and could be very time
> consuming.

Yes and it also depend on how often you update it. Doing a so huge
translation
and being forced to do another pass right after you finished a pass because
the english was updated can be very frustating for the translator and also
can lower its motivation...

> I wonder if some of DU actually *can* be translated ? COnstellation names
> are Latin not English and star names tend to be of Arabic origin so I
guess
> they would stay as they are in most other languages too.

I don't know about other languages but for example in French we don't speak
about "Pegasus" but we are saying "Pegase", we don't say "Cygnus" but
"Cygne"
also "evening star" is "l'etoile du berger" and "Ursa Minor" is called "la
Petite Ourse" for some example.

Best regards,

Alexandre.