Add user notes as <note> in target XLIFF file

[Manuel Souto Pico]

Background

One of the more problematic aspects of working in OmegaT in some projects that require some feedback from linguists (not just the translation) is the fact that this feedback cannot be transferred directly from OmegaT to the system that will receive the translated files. The linguist must insert their comments separately in another file or in another interface. This can be very time-consuming (to find the right place in some platforms where the comment must be registered) or the need to work with yet one more window open is frustrating and distracting.

However, some translation formats have embedded functionality to accommodate notes associated with each segment, e.g. XLIFF. This ticket is focused on XLIFF 1.2 (but the same principle should apply to XLIFF 2.x).

Request

Save text entered in the Notes pane in OmegaT as the content of a <note> node which is a child of the current <trans-unit> node in the target XLIFF file.

Behaviour

1. User enters note "bla" (in the Notes pane), which is saved as <note>bla</note> under the <tu> in the project_save.tmx file:

<tu>
  <note>bla</note>
  <tuv lang="en">
    <seg>foo</seg>
  </tuv>
  <tuv lang="es">
    <seg>bar</seg>
  </tuv>
</tu>

1. When user presses Ctrl+D to create the target XLIFF file, the note is added as a child of the <trans-unit> node in the target XLIFF file that gets the translation to which the note is associated:

<trans-unit id="tu-1">
  <source xml:lang="en">foo</source>  
  <target xml:lang="es">bar</target>  
  <note from="reviewer">bla</note>  
</trans-unit>

The from attribute can be necessary to distinguish these notes from other notes addressed to the linguist that the file might already include, and the value can be just the user ID.