Hello Charles and everybody else :) On 14/12/2006, at 9:12 PM, Charles-H.Schulz wrote:
VI: we would have released yesterday but...First, let me congratulate you and your team for the job you did for Vi.OOo. You may feel frustrated but for a first shot, it's really not bad at all. You'll know better for the next time.
I certainly hope so!
OOo may suffer from a lack of information, but I think that it is alsobecause it is a complex software. I'm also partly responsible if you didnot know there was a separate QA project here on OOo. Some information should be clarified I guess.
I strongly suggest we have a basic Howto for l10n projects. It doesn't need to be long and complex, but it can include items like:
• the need to sign and send in the JCAwhich I found out by asking questions, only two days before I had to submit our translation)
• where QA fits in the release process
which I found out too late, by asking questions, a day before release)
• the mailing lists you need to join to keep track of l10n issues,
e.g.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for announcements, especially about needed
translations
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for overall i18n issues
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for l10n issues
releases to see announcements of builds etc.
announce to see pan-project announcements
[EMAIL PROTECTED] to discuss translating the user survey
and I'm probably missing quite a few. :(
If someone who actually understood the whole i18n overview, sat down
and imagined they knew absolutely nothing about OOo, and summarized
what a new person _needs_ to know about OOo to achieve a release,
that would be a huge help to all of us and especially those starting
out.
I've only got from one point to another in OOo by feeling my way around and asking a lot of questions. It's been very inefficient, and has taken up a lot of time I could have used to get the tasks done. And in the end, it meant a blocked release and major arrangements throughout Vietnam hanging on it. Because I didn't know what I was going. God knows I must have asked enough questions to find out. But I didn't find out. And really, we should have some basic information to avoid that sort of blundering around.
As a comment however, I don't think that projects like KDE or Mozilla are less complex in their processes, at least it does not look like it on their web site.
I have managed to avoid Mozilla so far, although the nets are closing in: the same friend who decoyed me into Ooo has referred the Mozilla people to me. ;)
But I can speak with personal experience of KDE, GNOME, Debian, the TP and nearly a score of other free-software projects.
No matter how complex the project may be, the i18n list concentrates all the information needed by translators. The minute you join the list, you are welcomed and referred to the Howtos. The list gets all announcements you need to see, including reminders about deadlines, checking and submission procedures. You have all the information you need.
I myself write that type of welcome email several times a week. If you create a template (which I should do, and haven't got around to doing), you can do it fairly quickly, and not miss anything. Then you know the new entrant knows the basics.
Thank you for your contribution and this first "not so ready" release, Clytie.
Thankyou for your help and encouragement, Charles. :)I just wish I could have done a better job of it. I am trying to get over the shock of having no release where one was planned to occur, and to do both damage control and missing QA at the same time. However, I still need people to do the QA. <sigh>
from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN
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