Translated AppStream metadata for KDE!

It took some time, but now it’s finally done: KDE has translations for AppStream upstream metadata!

AppStream is a Freedesktop project to extend metadata about the software projects which is available in distributions, especially regarding applications. Distributions compile a metadata file from data collected from packages, .desktop files and possibly other information sources, and create an AppStream XML file from it, which is then – directly or via a Xapian cache – read by software-center-like applications such as GNOME-Software or KDEs Apper.

Since the metadata available from current sources is not standardized and rather poor, upstream projects can ship small XML files, AppStream upstream metadata or AppData in short. These files contain additional information about a project, such as a long description and links to screenshots. They also provide hints about public interfaces a software provides, for example binaries and libraries, making it possible for distributors to give users exactly the right package name in case they are missing a software component.

So, in order to represent graphical KDE applications like they deserve it in the new software centers making use of AppStream, we need to ship AppData files, with long descriptions, screenshots and a few URLs.

But how can you create these metadata files? In case you want your graphical KDE app to ship an AppData file, there is now a help page on the Techbase Wiki which provides all information needed to get started!

For non-visual stuff or software which just wants to publish it’s provided interfaces with AppStream metadata, there is a dedicated page for that as well. Shipping metadata for non-GUI apps will help programmers to satisfy depedencies in order to compile new software, enhance bash-completion for missing binaries and provides some other neat stuff (take a look at this blogpost to get a taste of it).

And if you want to read a FAQ about the metadata stuff and get the bigger picture, just go to the Techbase Wiki page about AppStream metadata as well.

The pages are not 100% final, so if you have questions, please write me a mail and I’ll update the pages, or simply correct/refine it by yourself (it’s a wiki afterall).

And now to the best thing: As soon as you ship an AppStream upstream metadata file (*.appdata.xml* for apps or *.metainfo.xml* for other stuff), the KDE l10n-script (Scripty!) will automatically start translating it, just like we already do with .desktop files. No further actions are necessary.

I already have a large amount of metadata files here, partially auto-generated, which show that we have about 160+ applications in KDE which could get an AppData file, not counting any frameworks or other non-GUI stuff yet. Since that is a bit much to submit via Reviewboard (which I originally planned to do), I hope I can commit the changes directly to the respective repositories, where the maintainers can take a look at it and adjust it to their liking. If that idea does not receive approval, I will just publish a set of data at some place for the KDE app maintainers to take as a reference (the auto-generated stuff needs some fixup to be commit-ready (which I’d do in case I can just commit changes)). Either way, it is safe now to write and ship AppData files in KDE projects!

In order to get your stuff translated, it is necessary that you follow the AppStream 0.6 metadata specification, and not one of ther older revisions. You can easily detect 0.6 metadata by the <component> root node, instead of <application>, or by it having a metadata_license tag. We don’t support the older versions simply because it’s not necessary, as there were only two KDE projects shipping AppData before, which are now using 0.6 data as well. Since 0.6, the metadata XML format is guaranteed to be stable, and the only reason which could make me change it in an incompatible way is to prevent something as bad as the end of the world from happening (== won’t happen 😉 ). You can find the full specification (upstream and distro data) here.

All parsers are able to handle 0.6 data now, and the existing tools are almost all migrated already (might take a few months to hit the distributions though).

So, happy metadata-writing! 🙂

Thanks to all people who helped with making this happen, and especially Burkhard Lück and Albert Astals Cid for their patch-review and help with integrating the necessary changes into the KDE l10n-script.