On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:37:20 +0100 Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@it-sudparis.eu> wrote: > Hi. > > Le dimanche 18 janvier 2009 à 12:24 +0000, Neil Williams a écrit : > > ... I'm now going to require, for any package > > using debconf that requires sponsorship, that debconf translations are > > requested and updated by the maintainer on an ongoing basis. > > You mean "that requires [my] sponsorship" ? Anything I review or sponsor - a successful review must precede sponsoring so if I'm going to sponsor, this criterion is applied at the review stage and a failure for this criterion - even if all others are prefect - will cause a rejection. In most cases, a rejection from one sponsor is taken into account by another, providing that the rejection is clearly explained and the steps required to resolve the problems are reasonable. I would encourage anyone reviewing RFS emails - not just sponsors but the large number of people on this list who are not DD's - to incorporate this requirement into their own reviews. As already noted on this list, translation is not an optional extra or some after-thought. Translation is a core part of free software, debconf is a core part of Debian and only Debian can ensure that debconf questions are translated. It makes no sense to do one part without the other. As I mentioned in the first email: "Any package using debconf must have a good reason to do so - good enough that the template needs to be translated." In other words, any package that does not deem it necessary to call for translations *before the first upload and before any upload where the template has changed since the last version* should not be using debconf in the first place. Consider the real impact of debconf - users get to answer the questions ONCE upon installation or upgrade. What is the point of asking questions exclusively in English for the majority of users who install the package? What is the point of asking *new or modified* questions exclusively in English? What good is it only to have the translations in a later version of the package that does not need the questions to be answered? The problem only gets worse for packages with a high popcon score because all those users will only get the question in English when they upgrade the package, unless the upload to Debian is delayed until the translations can be updated. debconf only ever asks the same question once - to be effective, that question should be translated the very first time that question is offered to the user. Translating it after the user has answered the question in English is pointless - at least as far as that user is concerned. I've filed a wishlist bug against lintian asking for support for lintian checking if debconf templates change but the changed string is not translated into any language. (i.e. the templates were modified but the upload was made before asking for updated translations). #512210 -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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