Re: [RFC] l10n survey available
On Sat, Aug 18, 2001 at 11:01:32AM +0200, Michael Bramer wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 12:53:55AM +0200, Martin Quinson wrote:
> > I've made a sort of survey about l10n in Debian. It lists all kind of
> > material available (program, man page, web site, ...), and for each, look
> > how the l10n issues are addressed.
> >
> > Then, there is a chapter about the future of l10n, and of the Debian
> > Translation Center (w.d.o/intl/l10n)
> >
> > It is available there:
> >
> > http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~mquinson/debian/l10n-survey
>
> ok.
>
> one point to the section
> !1.4) Package description
> !
> !Every package comes with a short description of its contents. For RPM packages,
> !the translation of it is simply added to the spec file. For deb packages, this
> !is not possible because dpkg does not handle it. There was a lot of discussion
> !about this, but people seem reluctant to modify dpkg to give it this ability.
> !So, some people begin to use a trick: Instead of translating each package
> !description, they translate them in the Packages.gz file which contains them
> !all, and which is loaded by apt. I personally think it's not the best solution,
> !because it won't help when I do a dpkg -l, for example, because dpkg won't know
> !about this translation. I think that dpkg must be modified. But as long as no
> !patch gets written, it won't happen. Help is welcome ;)
>
> the ddts-server make only the l10n job. The server (and I) don't make any i18n
> efforts. The translated Packages files on gluck are only a hack to test and use
> the translated descriptions. Now I have not a real solution to patch
> apt/dpkg/... to use this translation in a perfect way.
>
> But IMHO the ddts resolve all the translation problems.
Not all, but that's better than what was done before. It does not help
enough on maintaining, since the translator won't be warned of the need of
update. And you add a new format of material to translate. Since translators
are not all geek, that can be a problem, and I would prefer if the dtts
communicate with translator in po format. Because kbabel, gtranslator and
others exists.
But as I said before, I prefer the dtts as it is now than as it was 6 months
ago...
> > I'm very interressed in any kind of feedback. In particular, if the list of
> > material is not as exhaustive as wanted, I'll be glad to extend it.
>
> to the standard architecture:
> We should start and/or improve the translation of the texts from debian. (like
> descriptions, debian guides, man pages from debian (only) packages, ...)
>
> Don't start a project to translating all po-files. Some groups have
> his own translation projects (like kde).
Sure. Debian translate debian specific material, other group are on there own.
But what I dream about is the contrary, in fact: I dream about seing all
group using the same tools. So, Debian l10n tools would be contributed by
others, too.
> to the Organization issues:
> IMHO we don't need changes in the constitution.
>
> But we need real i10n groups, one per langauges. This groups can
> translated the (debian) man pages, write debconf bug reports,
> translated the package descriptions, etc.
>
> But we don't need a 'a new kind of person'.
>
> I love more the central approach like the ddts and not the
> translation per package (like debconf). The package maintainer does
> only delay the translation.
And because the maintainer delays the translation, I would like to give the
translator the ability to commit his changes....
> to the Packaging issues:
> IMHO we should not include all translation in all Packages. A
> package with
> - all man pages with all >20 translations
> - all package description
> - with all po-files
> - with all translated README's
> - with all info pages
> - with all guides
> ...
> are to big and useless. Nobody can write/read all this translation
> and use this...
>
> The 'orignal' package include only the english man and info pages,
> the english description, etc. And we have a usefull co-packages with
> only the translated parts (man, info, po-files, REAME, guides).
>
> With this you need only reconfig apt and you get more languages or
> less.
Thank you for resuming my text :)
Bye, Mt.
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