[Mageia-i18n] Transifex discussion

[Michael Scherer]

Le dimanche 19 juin 2011 à 09:24 +0200, Remco Rijnders a écrit :
> Dear all,
> 
> In last thursdays meeting on IRC the sole topic of discussion was the 
> evaluation of the use of transifex for our translation work. This 
> discussion was part of our general debriefing / post mortem of the 
> translation process leading up to the first official release of Mageia.
> 
> The general concensus of this meeting was that transifex is a useful tool 
> for the i18n process and quite userfriendly to use, especially to those 
> less familiar with tools like subversion for the translation process. That 
> said, in this meeting quite some missing features came up that would make 
> transifex much more useful to us if available.
> 
> This email is intended to summarize the findings of this meeting and to 
> invite both those who were and weren't present in that discussion to add 
> their views and opinions on the subject. Once the discussion is finished 
> we can hopefully come to a list of suggestions and improvement 
> opportunities for transifex and our use of it. Once we have the list, we 
> can see which opportunities are already available but not used by us yet, 
> which opportunities are already identified and worked on by upstream, and 
> which 'new' features we'd like to see. For the new features we can file 
> requests in the upstream ticket system for transifex. For new features and 
> already requested but not yet implemented features we can hopefully also 
> contribute to the discussion and development of these features as time and 
> skills permit.
> 
> Findings:
> 
> - When uploads from .po files from svn fail, no clear error message is 
>    given. This makes it harder to learn what the issue with the file is.

This issue can be lowered by using msgfmt -c on the file before upload.
It would be better to have a clearer message, but we can change the
procedure.

> - Translation credits are an issue still. Upstream has indicated a fix for 
>    this. When can we expect to see this in our version of transifex?

When the request will be made to sysadmin team :)

Either when there is a upgrade to 1.1 ( which requires a new version to
be released upstream ), or if we find the time to deploy the plugin.

> - Some unclarity exists on the integration between transifex and our svn 
>    repositories. This integration is possible, but not yet configured for 
>    us. An additional question is if this integration should be both ways or 
>    one-way (from svn to transifex).

AFAIK, tx no longer can upload to svn. However, it seems that tx can
pull from svn
( http://help.transifex.net/user-guide/one-dot-zero.html#have-you-removed-vcs-support-altogether ). 

But we didn't setup anything much so far.

> - Proofreading features are missing. It is hard to see what has recently 
>    changed in a project. As a result, a proofreading consists of the entire 
>    .po file instead of just the changed strings.

Using meld or kdiff would help for that ?

> - tx does offer 'suggestions' instead of general comments. Unfortunately 
>    they have to be browsed individually and are not easily searchable.

So you would to see the list of all suggestions, and to search in it ?
( that could be easy to do, a simple django template ).

> - 'diff' functionality should be available in transifex and not only in 
>    svn. This would massively improve usability for us.

Diff between what and what ? ( as tx do not have the concept of version,
afaik )

> - 'fuzzy' strings are emptied by transifex. Better handling of fuzzy 
>    strings would require less work by and confusion for translators.
Already reported :
http://trac.transifex.org/ticket/702

> - More collaboration features are needed. For example, the opportunity to 
>    add comments to a project and not just a string. e.g. "I have reviewed 
>    the first 200 strings".
There was this bug opened : http://trac.transifex.org/ticket/473
So if you could investigate about this and see if this fullfill the
need ?

There is also http://trac.transifex.org/ticket/558



> Other wishes not directly related to transifex:
> 
> - It would be useful that whenever a .pot file changes, a summary or diff 
>    of the changes is sent to the i18n-mailinglist.

Already asked, but we didn't did it yet. Was there a bug report for that
( as I completely forgot about it :/ )


-- 
Michael Scherer