Re: Debian Debconf Translation proposal ( again )
On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 04:34:23PM +0100, Dominique Devriese wrote:
> Colin Watson writes:
> > Don't pray that they get accepted. Take the initiative and NMU in
> > the usual way after some suitable period. Everyone else doing
> > general work on our packages has to do exactly the same thing; what
> > gives translators a different status?
>
> Basically because there is a better alternative for translators.
I don't think there is, in the case of debconf templates. Removing
debconf template translations from the package with which they're
associated makes the whole system more fragile, as I've described
elsewhere.
> For other people doing "general work", there often isn't any. If you
> think there is, feel free to propose that as a separate proposal,
> instead of trying to discourage this one.
>
> I mean, how can you really see this as a valid argument against the
> proposal. I have indicated real and fundamental problems with the
> current approach, a new system, with real and proven advantages, and
> all you say here is "I don't like to change. Furthermore, in
> completely different situations, we also use NMUs". Please provide
> arguments based on advantages and disadvantages of the proposed
> system.
I have already done so, including describing fatal flaws with your
proposed system which mean that it breaks on upgrade (as far as I can
see, unavoidably).
You're completely misrepresenting what I'm saying, anyway. For example,
man pages could perhaps be handled in some different way; but I think
that packages have higher quality when the man page is included in them,
so I do not propose splitting them out even though it might make it
marginally easier to edit them for style. I think that releases of a
package [1] should go through the maintainer, or somebody else
temporarily assuming the role (and therefore the responsibilities) of
the maintainer.
[1] I'm deliberately not saying "changes to a package" here; if we had a
Subversion repository for the whole of Debian, for instance, I
wouldn't object to debconf template translators having global commit
access to debian/po directories as long as a maintainer was
responsible for the final test and release to users.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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