Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
Yann Leboulanger wrote: That's true, but from a user point of view, having a 40% completed translation is very unpleasant. This is certainly only your opinion. Why impose your view to all users? Let every user decide -- if it's unpleasant and annoying, there are various ways for the end user to override that. By removing the translation, you don't give them any choice. In fact, some users (such as some of my friends and colleagues) will stop using the program only because of this. Switching read language is very not pleasant IMO. Not according to my experience. I even mix several languages: LANGUAGE=bg:mk:ru:sr:ro:uk:ar If the opinion that this is not userfriendly was widespread, the gettext manual would recommend developers to delete outdated translations, and it would be the established practice in the Free World. Note that even with a castrated translation, Gajim will still look partially translated by virtue of being a GTK+ app. (Fortunately, the GTK+ developers never delete translations -- I guess that makes the library not very pleasant in your eyes.) And we just removed those translations from release, not from trunk. How generous. Unfortunately this does not help the majority of users, who will install from the tarball or via their distro channels (which presumably would use the tarball as well). It's the time of blackmailed these days ! Indeed, this is a form of blackmailing. I definitely consider it as such. You are effectively saying to translators: Make sure you maintain your translation well, otherwise we may wipe out your work from the subsequent release(s). I don't think that any translator -- good or bad, diligent or lazy -- deserves such a treatment. We don't want to punish anyone, of course. But in effect you do exactly that. If you think this is a way to attract more translators, you are again wrong -- this is precisely the recipe to drive them away. Ask other seasoned translators, if you don't beleive me. It might be useful also to poll users who traditionally use a localized system. ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
Yann Leboulanger wrote: I could return you this argument. No, that is not equivalent, really. (no, don't ask users to remove a po file, or set environment variables for Gajim, it's not user friendly) How is setting an environment variable (or a wrapper created only with a few clicks) less user-friendly than figuring out where to download the .po from, editing LINGUAS or compiling it and putting it in localedir? And the annoyance by a partial translation is a myth. Maybe it is rare to have partial translations for the major languages that have strong teams, but for the rest it is something natural. But if some people want the half translation, they can download the po file from svn. This is never going to happen. Well, never say never... I don't know what is the opinion of Gajim users, because we don't have a way to ask their opinion, but I would be happy to hear here what they think about that. I think this list is mostly read by developers and packagers, which excludes the target user base which should be polled. You think we do, we think we help users to have a nicer Gajim. Yes, I am sure that this decision was made with good intentions. I don't dispute that. But there's a reason why nearly nobody does this. If it was a good thing, people would have figured that out long time ago. I heard your complaint. Is it shared? Ask on gnome-i18n (for example) where people actually use localized environments and actively participate in translations. The opinion of a developer who doesn't use a localized MUA (which has a complete and excellent French translation, I'm told) is biased by definition. ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
At Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:07:47 +0100, aste...@gajim.org wrote: Author: asterix Date: 2008-12-16 21:07:47 +0100 (Tue, 16 Dec 2008) New Revision: 10863 Removed: branches/gajim_0.12/po/br.po branches/gajim_0.12/po/el.po branches/gajim_0.12/po/nl.po branches/gajim_0.12/po/pt.po Log: remove translations that are less than 50% translated This is entirely inappropriate. There is nothing wrong in a partially translated program; otherwise msgfmt would consider untranslated/fuzzy messages a critical error. Removing incomplete translations has only nefarious effects: It is an insult to translators' work, it is a disservice to users who still prefer using programs in their native language, and it is a impolite to those who take advantage of the LANGUAGE environment variable and may use only a subset of the translated strings as fallback. Fortunately, only a few free software projects do this (Mozilla, OOo, Claws Mail, ...), and it is very disturbing to see Gajim joining them in this bad practice. ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
Am 16.12.2008 um 22:50 schrieb Yavor Doganov: This is entirely inappropriate. There is nothing wrong in a partially translated program; otherwise msgfmt would consider untranslated/fuzzy messages a critical error. Removing incomplete translations has only nefarious effects: It is an insult to translators' work, it is a disservice to users who still prefer using programs in their native language, and it is a impolite to those who take advantage of the LANGUAGE environment variable and may use only a subset of the translated strings as fallback. Fortunately, only a few free software projects do this (Mozilla, OOo, Claws Mail, ...), and it is very disturbing to see Gajim joining them in this bad practice. No translation is better than a wrong and unmtaintained translation. Especially when this can even compromise security as important things are not translated well enough. We therefore decided to only keep translations for which we have a maintainer. If you don't agree with the removal of a specific language, feel free to volunteer as a maintainer for it. But that means you have to verify the translation makes sense etc. -- Jonathan ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
Jonathan Schleifer wrote: No translation is better than a wrong and unmtaintained translation. Really? Unmaintained translations just accumulate more fuzzy and untranslated strings, which are *not* displayed at runtime. So basically, you are removing all translated strings that should be correct. OTOH, a 100% complete translation can be utterly wrong and unusable compared to a 40% complete good translation. Especially when this can even compromise security as important things are not translated well enough. Please explain how this can possibly happen. If el.po is outdated, untranslated and fuzzy strings will be displayed in English. If you delete the whole PO file, you just delete the valid Greek strings. Zero improvement, only regression. We therefore decided to only keep translations for which we have a maintainer. It is up to you to decide how to manage your own project, I just feel the need to tell you that this is wrong and arrogant. If you don't agree with the removal of a specific language, feel free to volunteer as a maintainer for it. Thanks for the reminder. While I speak several languages, I only translate to my native language, for a good reason. I am inclined to do the reverse -- if you continue with this practice, I think I will stop maintaining my own translation. I don't like the idea of punishing all our users by deleting my work if I can't catch up for a particular release. But that means you have to verify the translation makes sense etc. Even the best translator can't do that, which is why translation teams cooperate and try to fix bugs by looking at each others work, and processing users' bug reports. By deleting a translation just because it is not complete you are seriously interfering with this natural process, and this is harmful. It also opens the gate to lots of duplicate work -- a person may start translating 0.12 from scratch instead of stepping on the shoulders of previous translators. ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
Re: [Gajim-devel] [commit-gajim] r10863 - branches/gajim_0.12/po
Yann Leboulanger wrote: Yavor Doganov wrote: I am inclined to do the reverse -- if you continue with this practice, I think I will stop maintaining my own translation. I don't like the idea of punishing all our users by deleting my work if I can't catch up for a particular release. It's the time of blackmailed these days ! We don't want to punish anyone, of course. If someone is interested in continuing those translations, we'll of course give him the po (which is still in trunk by the way) Ho, moreover, those translation are not abandoned since last release, but for years and several releases. -- Yann ___ Gajim-devel mailing list Gajim-devel@gajim.org http://lists.gajim.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/gajim-devel
