Re: Re^2: Link to Japanese Debian?
On 30 Jul 1997, Marco Budde wrote:
> We should start to include foreign package descriptions in the control
> file for important languages like Spanish, France and German. Be should
> set up teams for this translation work. The package maintainer could send
> his English description to a mailing list and will get a translation from
> every team.
Better, the control file structure should first be extended to
support Descriptions in multiple languages. Only after that is
done, the package maintainer could accept translated descriptions
(probably from one designated source per language, which would do
the translations or vet translations doen by others), integrate
the translated descriptions into the packages, and update the
distribution.
One difficulty is the case of an upgrade which affects the
baseline Description field (the maintainer correcting an error,
or possibly upgrading to a new upstream source version which
needs Description changes. The Description translations would
then be outdated. Rather than delay the upgrade release, or
remove the outdated translations, it'd probably be best for the
maintainer to retain the outdated translations in the package,
but indicate in some standard manner that they're outdated.
(e.g., "Description-French-1.2-3:" on a version 1.2-5 package)
Translation updates would go into the distribution in package
upgrades.
An alternative approach might be better. It is very inefficient to
upload a new version of a multi-megabyte package to make a change
in the control file. It is conceivable that package processing
facilities on the upload site might be extended to accept control
file updates, apply them mechanically, and mechanically issue a
re-versioned package without re-upload of the unchanged parts.
This would ease the package update workload on the maintainer
when integrating new or changed translations, and would encourage
faster application of translation-only upgrades than if a package
rebuild and full package upload were needed.
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