Keeping track of translations and updates

[Paolo Molaro <lupus@lettere.unipd.it>]

Hi.
In the effort of translating the Debian web pages there is the issue
of keeping track of translations and updates to the original document.
There are many solutions to this problem:
1) Translations sit on their own branch
	Pro: cvs could help showing conflicts in the updated files 
	     during the merge
	Con: many branches can confuse cvs
	     a lot of care must be taken by the translator to not
	     step in the HEAD branch
	     need to change current setup
2) Commits messages go to a mailing-list
	Pro: easy with the current setup
	Con: people need to subscribe to YAML (yet another mailing list:-)
3) Script driven (a script checks what needs to be translated or updated)
	Pro: simple
	     low overhead on the translator
	     uses current setup
	Con: ??

So I choose option 3 and wrote a little script available in the cvs
repo as webwml/check_trans.pl.
Hope this helps.

Here is the description:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# This is GPL'ed code, copyright 1998 Paolo Molaro <lupus@debian.org>.

# Little utility to keep track of translations in the debian CVS repo.
# Invoke as check_trans.pl [-v] [-d] [-s subtree] [language] 
# from the webwml directory, eg:
# $ check_trans.pl -v italian
# You may also check only some subtrees as in:
# $ check_trans.pl -s devel italian

# Options:
# 	-v	enable verbose mode
#	-d	output diff 

# Translators need to embed in the files they translate a comment
# in its own line with the revision of the file they translated such as:
# <!--translation revision-->
# The revision can be obtained from the CVS/Entries files or from
# the command "cvs status filename".

# TODO: 
# need to quote dirnames for metacharacters?
# use a file to bind a file to a translator?

----cut cut-------

lupus

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"The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
    - _The UNIX Programmer's Manual_, Second Edition, June, 1972.