As you might already know, XBMC has moved translations handling to a great web based translation system called Transifex lately for the Frodo release. This turned out to work really awesome with the help of our regular and a lot of new translators.

Translators would love to translate the addons and skins as well. Team XBMC would like to help the developement with providing and maintaining the same translation infrastructure, what we use for XBMC core, to YOUR addons and skins.

With this system, handling of language files for your addon becomes much more simple, because you won’t have to deal with pulling translations to your upstream addon repository language-by-language, monitoring the mailing list anymore.

All you have to do is provide some basic data of your upstream repository (where the fresh English language file resides) and you can easily pull in fresh translations from time to time, (or before bumping release) from XBMC’s official translations github repositories for addons and skins.

These repositories are always kept in sync with the translation work going on transifex.net. This work is done by Team-XBMC, just like we do it with XBMC-core and internal addon language files.

Along with user friendliness, one really awesome thing about Transifex is that translators will be able to use the translation memory created with the core language file and the internal addons. So they can check how a special term was already translated.

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As some of you might have noticed, we are in the process of making life for all hard working translators a whole lot easier. And for those of you who wanted to contribute with translating XBMC but have always thought it was too much hassle, we have now made it easier than ever.

Attila Jakosa have been working hard on changing the current xml-based translations into gettext standard, allowing for the use of a web based translation service.

With this standard in mind, the Team has decided to use Transifex as a collabarative online translation service, with advantages like

• Translation teams
• Shared translation memory
• Syntax checking
• Web editor
• Suggestions

See the forum post for more information and discussion on this.

If you feel like contributing, please don’t hesitate to register @ Transifex and request to join your native language team.

Transifex should be fairly easy to pick up and use in translations, but if you have any questions, post them in the appropriate forum.

Note to add-on developers: This will in the near future extend to all add-ons in the XBMC repository, so there is no need to go about creating your own projects.

UPDATE: If you have in the past translated XBMC to your language, please PM blittan on the forums and you will automatically become a coordinator for your language.

UPDATE2: There is now a wiki page for some help regarding Transifex.

We have been attending LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany since wednesday the 11th.

As always it has been a great experience and we have meet a lot of interested people, both current users and hopefully new users.

As you can see, we have been pretty busy demonstrating the system, most people have been pleased that we run on so many platforms including iOS

User Meetup

For the fun part, we are having a user meetup this evening @ Hops & Barleys. The adress is Wühlischstr 22/23

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For the third year in a row we are going to exhibit on LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany.

The exhibition is running from May 11 to 14 at the Berlin Fairgrounds (Messedamm 22) in hall 7 (S-Bahn station Messe Süd, next to the Deutschlandhalle).

We will be in hall 7.2.a booth 101.

If you are in Berlin, come and join us in the booth for a chat, competitions and a walkthru of XBMC.

We will be running XBMC on Linux (ASRock ION 330), OSX (MacBook Pro), iOS (Apple TV 2, iPhone, perhaps iPad) and Windows (also MacBook Pro). Further Malard is bringing an OpenELEC htpc running XBMC and hopefully the new “XBMC” remote.

The ones attending seems to be me (blittan), mdd, vdrfan, probst and Malard. So we will be covering german, english and swedish languages.

For everyone using XBMC and on location in Berlin, we are thinking of having a meetup at some nice pub/bar and grab a few beers and chit chat with us?

Since we are not native Berliners, suggestion on good bars, pubs and restaurants are more than welcome.

A while ago ASRock Europe kindly lent me an ION 330 to try out as my new HTPC equipment. Got it delivered and started unpacking. It was packed in a neat box along with a hdmi to dvi adapter, a support cd and an anti-slip pad. The case looks just as good as it does on the pictures. Installed it with hdmi to my 37″ LCD TV and optical toslink to my surroundsystem. Booted it up and because it was a sample it came with Windows Vista preinstalled.

Installed XBMC quickly to it and took it for a testspin using AEON as a skin, since it’s pretty demanding on the hardware. Navigation inside the skin seemed fine, noticed that it was a lot smoother than the NVIDIA ION box I had tested before. So surely there is a benefit from having a dual core Atom 330 instead of a single core Atom 230. Did not see any real sluggishness in the skin. Music playback and picture browsing was fine and the little I tested plugins it worked fine as well.
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As promised, here are some pictures of the NVIDIA ION box which were so kindly lent out to us during LinuxTag. Big thanks to NVIDIA for making this happen :)

Before sending it back to NVIDIA (with a tear in my eye, wanted to keep it ;) ) I gave it a quick testspin, since I didn’t get to play with it all that much during LinuxTag. My impression of that small box was that no matter what you fed it the playback didn’t stutter and was smooth and crisp. I have watched blueray on PS3 using the same TV and although that was fine, I don’t think the NVIDIA did any worse. Too bad my friend wasn’t home so we could try it out on his reference projector :(

Click for slideshow

Anyways, I will also post some pictures from linuxtag.

Click for slideshow

Yesterday we set the booth up, and now people are droping in. The ION box is playing 1080p stuff great, I am surely impressed. We even got to borrow a zotac :)

booth

Acer Aspire running XBMC for windows



Ion box, compare to the apple-tv remote next to it :)



Zotac box <3 (this one wants to go home with me) :P



Big screen :)

ps. watch a live feed here