Hello,

I recently had different discussions with some of you about how to better 
organize translations. You may have noticed that right now files to be 
translated are here and there in the SVN source code tree. This is not simple 
for you and for this reason I uploaded archives of files to be translated on 
the page “Translation files”. But this is not sufficient:

* archives may be obsoletes
* we are not aware of updates
* when several contributors work on translating into the same language, they 
cannot share their work easily
* other applications need translating, they're not in these archives

On the one hand Sergey is asking to use SVN for the Russian translation team, 
and on the other hand Marian is feeling we should host our own repository for 
those applications that still need translating… and they're right! So I propose 
we setup a new SVN section for translations only. The idea is to gather all the 
translation files so that translators would not have to search for them on 
their own. This would then be of my responsibility to synchronize between the 
translation section and the build sections. Most likely some built-in SVN 
features could help me to set automatic synchronization.

Of course archives of files to be translated will be still available so that 
people can start helping the project without bothering with SVN setting and 
use. More generally people who want to help us but do not want to dive into SVN 
could continue to rely on me! You may know that the Gna's SVN server is using 
GPG authentication through SSH. This means that developers need to generate a 
personal GPG key, upload the public key onto Gna's servers (not the private 
one…), then set their SVN client to authenticate using SSH. Additionally 
setting up a GPG agent could be a good idea since SVN may otherwise ask you for 
the pass-phrase for any SVN operation even including updating…

Therefore we also have to write a documentation on how to proceed:

* how to subscribe to the SVN project on Gna (account + GPG key)
* how to use SVN on your computer
   * on Linux (I should already have most of information)
   * on Windows (Sergey?)
   * on Mac (Janneth?)
* basic SVN use (checkout, update, commit, add)
* recommendations on the SVN use, for example do not wait to have finished the 
whole work to send it to the server, try to indicate clearly in commit comments 
what you are talking about, etc.
* where to put new files, especially for applications that do not have 
translation files yet

Here is the organization I propose for the SVN tree, which details the latest 
point:

doudoulinux/
  ├ live/         (the CD build tree)
  ├ packages/     (the apps build tree)
  ├ lang/         (the new section for translations)
  │  ├ branches/  (official releases, none as of writing)
  │  ├ tags/      (noticeable intermediary versions, for example 2010-05 and 
2010-08)
  │  └ trunk/     (development branch)
  │     ├ env/
  │     │  ├ icons/
  │     │  │  ├ applications/  (*.desktop files)
  │     │  │  └ categories/    (*.directory files)
  │     │  └ scripts/  (rewrite scripts, should be almost replaced with a 
single/pair of PO file(s) in a near future)
  │     └ apps/
  │        ├ doudoulinux/      (apps developed for DoudouLinux on purpose)
  │        │  ├ doudoulinux-mouse/
  │        │  │  └ po/         (PO files named 'ru.po', 'es.po', etc.)
  │        │  …
  │        ├ system/           (LXDE apps)
  │        │  ├ lxlauncher/
  │        │  │  └ po/
  │        │  …
  │        ├ education/
  │        │  ├ gcompris/
  │        │  │  └ po/
  │        │  ├ psyscache/
  │        │  │  └ lang/       (Pysycache is not using gettext)
  │        │  …
  │        ├ work/
  │        │  …
  │        ├ games/
  │        │  …
  │        └ multimedia/
  │           …
  │
  ├ docs/         (user documentation)
  ├ artwork/      (CD and website draws)
  └ server/       (web server custom files)

Please note that we are currently working on the “trunk/” version. Typically, 
as a start, you would have to fetch the “lang/” tree in trunk version:

$ svn checkout svn+ssh://<membername>@svn.gna.org/svn/doudoulinux/lang/trunk/ 
doudoulinux

Finally we also need to start a new set of documentation pages on the web site 
to explain what files to provide to translate a given application. For example 
Marian recently translated Pysycache into Romanian and it does not rely on PO 
files at all. So we need to keep such information publicly available. In my 
opinion the “Translate DoudouLinux” section should look like:

Translate DoudouLinux           (section)
  ├ The translation job
  ├ …
  ├ Translating applications    (new section)
  │  ├ Using PO files
  │  ├ Translating Pysycache
  │  ├ Translating Hydrogen
  │  …
  ├ Translating the DoudouLinux environment   (new article)
  ├ Translation status          (section)
  │  ├ Arabic status
  │  …
  └ Translator's FAQ

Please feel free to comment and improve my propositions whenever required. Of 
course if you feel motivated to write some of the pages to be created (in 
English?), you're welcome!

Regards,

JM.

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