Some workarounds for Virtaal

After using Virtaal 0.7.1 for all of a few hours, the TM functionality stopped working altogether for me. Nothing was added or used from the TM. I deleted my “$HOME/.virtaal” directory, but the problem persisted even after that.

I tried downloading the latest version of Virtaal from Github (v1.0.0 beta 1). The installation notes say that one should be able to simply run the executable from the source tree, but the executable immediately crashed for me.

Actually, the way the executable does imports is not good, and no script is provided for driving it. Also, some Virtaal plugins also throw exceptions and interfere with other parts of the program (like everything related to TM) if their dependencies are not met. The workaround is just to delete those plugins.

If you just want to get the latest version of Virtaal running without any big headaches, you can download a ZIP of the latest source tree, extract it anywhere, and then remove the offending plugins:

$ rm -vrf virtaal/plugins/_ipython_console
$ rm -vf virtaal/plugins/tm/models/libtranslate.py

Then make a shell script called run.sh in the base directory of the source tree:

#!/bin/sh
cd $(dirname "$0") || exit 1
PYTHONPATH=. ./bin/virtaal

After that, executing run.sh starts the new Virtaal without errors, and with the important features like TM working correctly.

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Just FYI, while Virtaal is made by the same people as Pootle, it seems they have virtually (see what I did there?) abandoned it, and development focus is on Pootle.

That’s a shame. It seems like a neat program.

I noticed the ChangeLog was last updated eight years ago, and no installation document is included.

It is a shame, but i understand their reasoning. It’s mainly meant for tech translation (used by Mozilla, etc.) and having it online means people can contribute a little bit of translation without having to worry about setup.

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That’s the whole problem. Not nearly Linux enough. They should be hard at work making arcane tools for solitary hermits.

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