Subject: [bug#37413] [PATCH 0/9] Channel news distribution mechanism

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:02:05 +0200

Hello,

"pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]> skribis:

> I did not want to slow down these useful patches; the news file and
> its translations can remain as proposed by Ludo.  How channel authors
> translate their news file is their choice.
>
> I thought we can suggest channel authors to use one gettext PO file
> containing translations for both the news file and package information
> and submit it to the TP.  We can provide scripts to convert to and
> from a news file.  Writing such scripts is not hard because PO files
> use a simple format.  Guix itself should use this process too.

Ah OK.  Having an optional add-on process to work with PO files would be
nice too have.  My concerns were about having PO files at the core of
the news mechanism.

If you’re fine with the news format as it is in this patch series, then
I guess we can go ahead and push the patches?

> How about adding a comment to the POT file that we wish for
> translators to prioritize and urgently add translations for news?  Is
> it really necessary to submit the entire Guix tarball to the TP for
> updating news; I thought the tarball is just for convenience of
> translators?  I wonder what Benno or others from the TP think.

My feeling is that this use case doesn’t correspond to what the TP is
about, but yeah, you could ask them.

Also, “urgently” won’t work because they would have to be manual
intervention by at least two people before the info reaches translators:
someone on the Guix side who’d submit a tarball (?) to the TP, and the
TP coordinator who’d notify translation teams.  That’s another reason
why I’m skeptical about the applicability of this workflow for news.

>> Using a PO file for news items seem a bit drastic too: a news item is
>> not supposed to change, except maybe for a typo.
>>
>
> PO files are simple and what the Translation Project’s translators are
> used to.  I do not understand how another format could be more
> appropriate.

It’s not so much about the format, but rather about the tooling and
workflow.  I do not see how to integrate gettext and everything that
goes with it (PO files, compilation to .gmo, text domains, etc.)
directly into this design.

But like you wrote, we can add tools on top that would allow us to use
PO files if we want to.

Thanks,
Ludo’.