Re: Quel avenir pour la version française des pages de manuel Linux ?
Hi Christian,
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> wrote:
>
[...]
>> >> And I can't resist asking: which of these options could each side
>> >> consider as viable?
>> >
>> > I think that b) is the most reasonable, indeed. I fully understand
>> > that, saying so, we're saying "switch to PO" to Alain....:-)
>>
>> There is one more piece in all of this: even if the teams can combine
>> their efforts, can they keep up with me. You are all volunteers (I
>> assume); currently I'm working full time on man-pages. Alain
>> estimates that each of my weekly releases typically requires two days
>> of translation work. Obviously, that is unsustainable for him. But
>> equally obviously, if it is unsustainable for you all when sharing the
>> work as a team, then there's little point in encouraging Alain to go
>> through the work of switching to new tools.
>
>
> Which is maybe another argument for a gettext+po4a-based translation
> infrastructure....
>
> Anything based on direct changes in English manpages requires a
> *constant* commitment. Otherwise, I guess that, at some moment, one
> might have hard times coping back with the upstream changes.
One of the things that Alain has striven to do is a 1-to-1 release for
the upstream English version So for each English 2.xy and 3.xy there
is a corresponding French n.xy version. At first, I thought Alain was
mistaken to do this. But now I see it as a virtue, since:
a) Any distribution can pluck out the French tarball corresponding to
the English traball they are also distributing in a particular
release.
b) Alain in effect is reviewing each of my releases, and providing
much useful feedback to me about things to fix.
Of course, this work style could be compatible with the Debian tools,
if everyone could agree on that approach.
> With a gettext-based system and, assuming that we can achieve an i18n
> system that allows *you* to easily regenerate PO files for every
> change you do (or on a daily basis or so) and then offer them for
> translation on an easy-to-access system (such as Pootle), when the
> translation teams can't cope with your changes, the PO file(s)
> statistics will just decrease....but the reconciliation will be still
> possible....when the translator is ready again (or back from vacation,
> or whatever...).
>
> Of course, that will not change the "données de base": the amount of
> changes you're doing is not sustainable for translators *at this very
> moment*. Of course, I suspect you'll not keep the same rhythm during
> years so,
Yes, probably this will not last forever.
> at some moment, translators will be again able to cope back
> with changes and re-update.
>
> As a technical start (mostly for people who are reading this thread
> and didn't talk yet because they're not on holidays like me....or
> doing their paid work like you), do you currently work in a VCS
> system, ie something that could be checked out by a motivated person
> so that (s)he can propose a patch to switch the manpages build system
> to po4a?
I use SVN, but that's just for my own bookkeeping. The repository is
not public. Sometime in the next few months, I aim to switch to a
public git repository.
Cheers,
Michael
> That could be used as a live demo of the system I'm thinking about,
> indeed:
>
>
> You --> changes in English --> regenerate PO files --> commit to VCS
> --> Debian Pootle
>
> Translators --> commit to Pootle --> Pootle commits to VCS
>
>
>
>
>
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--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
man-pages online: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online_pages.html
Found a bug? http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html
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