Hello Translators, As some of you may be aware, there has been some talk in the community about changing ubuntu's well known six month release schedule, and switching to a rolling release model. This would mean that new versions of programs will arrive in ubuntu when they are deemed ready, rather than on a six month cycle. The LTS (Long Term Support) releases would continue to exist in their current form. You can read more about the proposal here [1].
Since switching to a rolling release will clearly have an impact on our work, so I was wondering how other translators feel about this proposed change. After we have discussed this, I will create summary of the points raised here, so that our position on this proposal is clear for the wider community. On the positive side, translation effort does not have to be condensed into a short window between UI Freeze an the TranslationsDeadline, which should give us all more time to complete translations. Also, if programs are updated more frequently, the amount of new strings in each release will also be smaller, which again makes translating easier. If updates are more frequent, this could also remove the need for langpack updates, which have been lacking of late anyway. The main negative side is the risk of regressions in translation of programs. If the new version of a program is released before translators have had time to update all translations, users will be faced with a program that is suddenly only partly translated. This is a serious usability problem with the Dash and HUD, since these are text-based tools. For example, I'm currently running the Dutch beta of 13.04, and many of the search terms I use to start programs (Dash) or interact with program menus (HUD) do not work, since the translations are not completed yet. If we switch to a rolling release, each new version of a program has a chance of breaking the users workflow by removing localised terms the user relied on for the Dash or HUD. Clearly, this would not be acceptable. Tools needed: There would have to be some way that translators get notified when the new version of a program is about to land. I'm guessing this is not a difficult thing to accomplish, and could be as simple as sending an automatic message to the ubuntu-translators list when a new version of a program enters the 'proposed' repository. Those are my thoughts on the subject, what do you think? Regards, Redmar -- Ubuntu Dutch Translators [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-February/036537.html
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