(followups set to -i18n)
I've made some changes to the big table of languages on
<http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Translations>, and I'd like to make some
associated policies, to try to make best use of limited volunteer effort
and enthusiasm for localisation.
When are translations orphaned?
-------------------------------
The first change is to add a "last touched" column, which shows the last
major release where a translation had any significant work done on it.
The intention is to make it clear at a glance (to people who might be
thinking of volunteering) which translations have been effectively
orphaned (this being a natural and inevitable part of the lifecycle for
a volunteer project such as this one), and thus are fair game, without
them being put off by worrying about treading on the toes of past
translators.
I've populated it initially based on skimming Subversion logs, but this
is an inexact science, so I may have got it wrong. The idea is that
someone (a developer / release manager) would review the whole table
once per major release cycle and update it to reflect translation
updates made during that cycle; this shouldn't be too much overhead.
I'd like to propose a definite policy for when translations are
considered orphaned, something like: if a translation hasn't been
touched for two major releases, it's deemed to be orphaned, and updates
from new translators can be accepted without evidence of an attempt to
contact the previous maintainer. (I.e., those translations with 2.1,
2.0, or 1.14 in the column would currently be "fair game".)
As part of considering a translation "orphaned", I think we should clear
out the contact details from this table and revert it to "position
vacant", so we don't have a table filled with contact details that
haven't been valid since 1.14.x. (This is not intended to hide credit,
which is still in the po-file and the People file.) I haven't done this
yet, though (and I suspect much of the existing contact info is bogus).
Comments? If no objections in a week or two, I'll write this on the page
and consider it law :)
(For completeness, I've also added a "first version" column. This is
mainly to track translations that have been claimed but haven't actually
been submitted yet, such as Basque and Slovenian today.)
Who commits translations to svn?
--------------------------------
We give translators the choice between submitting translations directly
to svn themselves, or leaving it to someone who has the access and
inclination to do so.
In the latter case, sometimes there's someone on the dev team who's
particularly suited to "shepherd" a particular language, notably if they
know it themselves and can thus review/test the translation on the way
in.
This is clearly useful, but it's also worth writing down, rather than
having possibly inaccurate information floating around the dev teams'
heads, which could lead to cock-ups ("Oh, I thought you wanted to commit
kw.po, so I left it alone; oops, it missed the release"). So I've added
a "Committer" column. It's blank for most languages, meaning that anyone
with svn access can commit the translation, as currently.
(In any case, I'd expect this to only be a hint -- if the designated
committer is busy at the time of a release, anyone should be able to
commit the relevant translation, rather than having it miss a release.)
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