Status of DDTP and I18N (Was: DDTP translations for lenny but not for squeeze/sid?)
On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 06:43:54AM +0100, Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Grisu, it's hard to tell.
... but needs to be told.
> *I* don't do DDTP work myself (because too many things are web-based
> and I work offline) so I can't even realize when things are going
> wrong.
Not (fully) true. At least when DDTP started it had a mail interface
and I considered it quite useful. I do not want to question the current
main usage and this thread should not drift away from the main topic,
but this should be mentioned somehow. (I have no idea whether the mail
interface exists any more.)
> But the fact is that DDTP/DDTSS are running mostly un supervised for
> over a year now.
> ...
> So, basically, DDT* things are flying in autopilot mode for months.I'm
> even surprised that things are still working for some people..:-)
>
> This is the sad, but realistic, picture.
I simply repeat my question why nobody makes some noise about this on
more visible places. In my eyes the situation is as follows:
1. Description translations are provided since Lenny and apt and friends
are relying on it.
2. Description translations are important for our users and a key
feature to dive into non-English dominated places of the world.
3. We just have a valuable amount of translations (guessed from my
feeling 95% of the packages where I read the translations are in
German). I know this is only true for some languages - however
there was a certain effort of translators done which should not
be wasted.
If I consider item 1. this would be a fair reason to push ddtp stuff
from debian.net to debian.org domain and thus bring the technical part
under DSA control. IMHO this would ensure that any basic technical
problems will be handled quite reliable.
The second action which should be done is asking for skilled developers
who are able to continue development and doing maintenance. Perhaps
making clear that development in a kind team makes fun and I18N is not
only about just translating strings which perhaps makes some people
ignoring the I18N crew. It should be made clear that Debian as an
international project is keen on supporting users all over the world.
Last but not least we should actively consider cooperation with other
projects (mainly Debian derivatives which are using equivalent or at
least similar package descriptions in most cases).
I'm sorry if I might mention well known stuff but I'm seldomly lurking
on I18N list. The reason is not that I consider this team low. On the
contrary, I think it is a way underestimated but valuable team.
However, if I would feed expectations to do some valuable contributions
this would be just wrong because I'm to dedicated to other user oriented
projects (Blends - which really profit from i18n work) and my time is
simply limited. So I feel more honest to stay in the background but I
hereby really would ask you that you as a team would not stay in the
background at Debian project level. Please be more verbose if some
problem occures and try to become more importance (also technically in
terms of moving to debian.org).
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] correct me if I'm wrong if it was before Lenny, but this only would
strengthen my argument
--
http://fam-tille.de
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