Hi Danilo, Martin, Carlos:
Thanks for the explanations. I always lumped LP and ubuntu in the same boat as one entity, so it's good to know about the practical issues seperating them. In essense I am very glad that this is being taken care of :-) Djihed في ر، 28-11-2007 عند 11:10 +0100 ، كتب Danilo Šegan: > Hi Djihed, > > Today at 10:03, Djihed Afifi wrote: > > >> It's not our decision: it's a technically hard problem. The only > >> assumption we make is that packages will contain proper POT and PO > >> files. If that doesn't happen, it's easier to fix it in a package, > >> than to try to construct a reasonable POT from all the PO files > >> (i.e. you may end up with too many messages for translation which are > >> obsolete, thus making translators do unneeded work, you may have > >> conflicting messages in different PO files, etc). > > > > What's technically hard about compiling existing .po files from > > upstream? > > You don't need the original .pot files for that. > > That's something Ubuntu packagers have to deal with, if they want that. > I can imagine why they may not want to do it, though (i.e. special > casing for a handful of packages: it's ugly, not hard; it's easier to > fix those few packages which have the problem by hand; etc). FWIW, > that's what is currently being done for 'universe' packages. > > You may talk to Martin Pitt (CCed) about what he thinks of it > (i.e. maybe not run 'strip-translations' when no .pot file can be > found in the tarball). However, that will make it harder for us to > track down problems like this (though, this is easily solveable: just > report a bug for the package once this is done), and I still think > it's more valuable to provide updated language packs. > > What I was talking about a technically hard problem is constructing a > POT file when one doesn't exist. As far as LP is concerned, that's > exactly the case, and we require POT file to ensure at least some > level of correctness. We have an idea how to solve that, which would > be equivalent to just "compiling existing .po files", but we don't > like it for the reasons I mentioned. > > >> No, but I probably miss your point. What they, however, do lose is > >> the ability to get updates with future language pack updates (the plan > >> for Gutsy is to issue them monthly). > > > > I meant - Since Launchpad and the language packs can't get the glade-3 > > catalog* - or any other package which can't build them, just roll the > > translations with the package itself. > > Yeah, that's doable, but would have to be done on the Ubuntu side of > things. I don't know much about it, but I've CCed Martin. > > >> Ubuntu is so far the best > >> distribution when it comes to propagating translator work to their > >> users (imo, though there's a lot to improve still), and that's solely > >> due to Launchpad/Ubuntu > > > > No, it isn't. It's not better than a distribution that just rolls > > everything with their original packages, and does no language packs. > > Have you never been late to provide updated GNOME translations by a > few days (i.e. a maintainer rolls out a tarball 3 days before the > deadline, and you do the update after that)? I am pretty sure you > were, and if you want your translations in your distribution, you need > to wait for the next major GNOME update in it. With Ubuntu, you just > go to Launchpad, upload your translations, and wait for the language > pack. > > > Sure that option may have drawbacks like bandwidth, but omitting whole > > existing translations is not one of them. > > > > <I'm an ubuntu user btw> > > > >> > >> > Not the right decision I believe. > >> > >> It's technically very hard to do anything else properly. > > > > Again, what's technically hard about rolling translations with their > > original package? > > We can solve this either on the LP level, or on the Ubuntu level. > I was talking from LP point-of-view. From Ubuntu POV, it's not up to > me to say how difficult it would be, since I am not going to be the > one doing the work :) > > >> Anyway, this is not because of Launchpad, this is because we're > >> providing language packs for Ubuntu, and want to make sure that some > >> data is at least correct. Launchpad itself works for much more than > >> just intltool-enabled modules, so it can't regenerate POT files in the > >> way damned-lies (on l10n.gnome.org) does. > > > > Either way, it is because of the bureuacracy in the middle. Bureaucracy > > can't handle them? just roll it the old fashioned way! > > > > (I'm repeating myself here) > > This may require more effort than just fixing a package, though. > > >> And, fwiw, this might as well be broken behaviour in upstream Glade3: > >> i.e. standard intltool build rules always create a POT file and put it > >> in a tarball. There's a lot of sense in that, and not least of them: > >> how would you start translating a package if it comes with no POT? > > > > If I am an end-user, I don't want to translate a package, my priority is > > to get it. If I decide to translate a package, well in the case of > > Glade-3, I do as I did and go spend hours on the upstream package to > > translate it. > > And we want to make Launchpad a way to find faster how to contribute > to translations anywhere. Glade-3 is a special case for you, since > you are Arabic GNOME translation team leader, and Glade-3 is > translated in GNOME Subversion. But there are other use-cases as > well (like, you are Arabic translator and run into software which you > don't know where to go and translate). I am not saying Launchpad is > solving them or solving them perfectly yet, but that's where we want > to be. > > > And then sit and wait for ubuntu to deliver them and wonder where my > > work has gone. > > Reporting a bug was the right thing to do. Bugs happen. How many > other translations have you not seen in Ubuntu because of this? If > this is the first time you've hit this bug, I'd say it's not a big > problem (and I know you've been translating GNOME for a few years > already, and you've contributed a lot of translations). It might be a > problem that nobody caught this during Ubuntu pre-release testing, but > I guess there are not enough Ubuntu Arabic translators testing Ubuntu > (and Ubuntu mostly a community-driven distribution). > > We may disagree on the value of the Ubuntu/Launchpad approach to > translations, but I am pretty confident this one is not such a big > issue: only few packages have the problem, and they are easily fixed. > > Cheers, > Danilo -- Have a project you would like to be translated to Arabic? Let us know: http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Translation_requests Blog: http://djihed.com -- ubuntu-translators mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
