Please welcome the Smith Review Project to the galaxy of Debian projects. Project presentation -------------------- This work is intended to continue all through the etch->lenny release cycle and beyond. Its purpose is to review all English texts associated with Debian packages, namely debconf templates, manual pages and package descriptions. The project is named Smith because every nice project must have a name and Smith is a commonly accepted "common name" for people in English-speaking parts of the world. It also opens possibilities to play on words with "blacksmith", "wordsmith" and the like. The project also has a three-letter acronym name (SRP) which is mandatory in Free Software projects. Projects tasks and schedule --------------------------- The first task of the project began in early March 2007. It aims to review debconf templates for packages that use debconf to interact with users. In short, the aim of this process is to review the debconf templates for packages that use them, based on their popcon score, and: review the debconf templates; update translations; and get new translations. The debian-l10n-english contributors are currently polishing the whole process and tools, while work already started on a few packages - either packages with the highest popcon scores (kdebase, xorg, cupsys...) or packages that recently introduced or modified their debconf templates (lwat, aiccu, dtc...). How to contribute to SRP? ------------------------- Contributors with good skills in the English language and good writing ability are welcome to join the project by subscribing to the debian-l10n-english mailing list. This will be the main communication channel for the project. The project will also use the #debian-i18n IRC channel on irc.debian.org and a wiki page has been setup at http://wiki.debian.org/I18n/SmithReviewProject Details of the process and maintainer interaction ------------------------------------------------- The reviews are intended primarily to check the spelling and grammar of the packages, but also to move towards consistency in the style of writing. Having a group of people who are unfamiliar with a package reading the texts can also help to flag up areas that are not particularly well-explained, or that could generate confusion. It is hoped that, in addition to the language issues this project is tackling, we can also help to address some usability issues. The maintainers will be made aware of the process at all stages, and at no point will any changes be made to their package without their consent. It is hoped that maintainers will incorporate the changes into their packages as with the normal l10n process. However, this does mean that as the lenny release approaches, there may be an NMU campaign to fix long-outstanding bugs from this project. This will not be done for cases where the maintainer actually vetoes the change, though. Nevertheless, the project team would like to ask maintainers to raise their concerns with us so that we can work towards a compromise rather than vetoing the changes. If, as a maintainer, you decide to make changes to your debconf templates at any point, you are invited to contact the team at debian-l10n-english for a review of the changes at any time. This would help us with the work, but also save you possibly having to make repeated changes to the templates. This offer extends to anyone who would like their use of English in any part of a package checked. Disclaimer ---------- Any bit of Frenglish in this announcement and communication with package maintainers should be taken as the author's own limited capabilities with English. Please note that the project *also* includes real good English speakers and writers, so maintainers should not fear that their packages end up speaking broken English. --
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