On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 03:31:49PM +0200, Richard Atterer wrote: > On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 03:42:00PM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote: > > I have been reading the DDTS thread, and seeing that it was > > resolving into a "each package should maintain their translation". I > > would like to present what I think may be problematic in that > > approach : > > 1. This results in filing random bugs in BTS in random manner. [snip] > > I think there's an answer to this problem: When the maintainer updates > the translations of his package, this should be fully automated. > E.g. just one command > > update-translations --from-mbox <my_mail_archive> > > which fishes out the DDTS messages (which are sent in a standard > layout), or, for people lucky enough to be permanently online, an > "update-translations --from-web" command in debian/rules which gets > the translation updates directly from the DDTS server. > > So far, *everything* related to a Debian package can be found in the > corresponding source package. I don't think it's a good idea to change > this.
full agree > > 2. A package is re-uploaded with translation. There is a package > > uploaded with one-line changelog saying something like "Merged > > spanish templates". It is a load to autobuilder/ftpmirror/etc. and > > of course manual intervention to rebuild a package means that an > > error occurs, and it does. > > > > The main problem here is that translation start after the initial > > upload of packageto Debian happens, which means there will be a "-2" > > Debian package which will include the translation, and a "-1" Debian > > package will have no translation. > > Yes, that's one of the basic problems. IMHO with the proposed > "override" mechanism via Descriptions-XX.po (or whichever form it is > going to have), this is mostly solved - anyone getting the "-1" > package from testing will already see the translation. People tracking > unstable may or may not see them, depending on how often they update > and on the speed of the translators. > > Some people are concerned that their daily update from unstable will > need too much bandwidth because of all those extra uploads. If the > override mechanism works, I see no reason not to have a policy "don't > re-upload if only the translation changed". full agree > > 3. No choice of "I want this locale and not others". > > I assume in particular you mean "I prefer this _encoding_"? This is a > point that hasn't been discussed at all so far. see below > Will there be one description .po file per language in the source > package, or one for all translations? The alternatives here are: In a .po file is only one languages. So we have n Description.po file (n = Number of supportet languages). A User must only downloads the needed Descriptions files. In the source we have control-de.po, control-fr.po, control-es.po, ... maybe all in one subdir. > - Supply descriptions in UTF-8, and recode them for the user's current > encoding on the user's machine. Nice and clean, but requires support > (possibly quite extensive changes) in dpkg/apt. NB, we _do_not_ need > full Unicode support in all of Debian for this, just in the tools > that deal directly with the description data. no, don't re-invent the wheel. This all make gettext. We don't need patch apt, dpkg, other toold this way. We must only use a old, nice and tested tool: gettext. > - Supply descriptions in UTF-8 and recode them to a default encoding > that root can configure on each machine. Do the recoding immediately > after an "apt-get update" or "dpkg -i", so the UTF-8 version is > never stored on the machine. Might be the way to go for the moment, > even if it's not ideal. Most importantly, it is upwards-compatible > with the first solution above. we don't need this all > - Pick one default encoding per language and just assume the user uses > that encoding. Problematic: Should we ever want to change the > default encoding, there'll be lots of packages using the old > encoding, and we'd be stuck with it. yes, we use one default encoding per languages in the ddtp. > I'm all for at least _supplying_ the translations in UTF-8, even if > they're not stored on the user's machine like that for now. Note that > this does not even mean that the translators need to produce > translations in UTF-8 - the DDTS can recode their work into UTF-8. In future the ddts will make this and send UTF-8 encoded po files. I have get a request von Wichert to use UTF-8 only. We can latin-X etc recode to UTF-8, so this all is no problem. Gruss Grisu -- Michael Bramer - a Debian Linux Developer http://www.debian.org PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Linux Sysadmin -- Use Debian Linux Win0.98 supports real multitasking - it can boot and crash simultaneously.