[Pkg-haskell-maintainers] Bug#709814: haskell-arrows: Recent changes in libghc-* packages description is a major setback for DDTP translation work

[Beatrice Torracca]

Package: haskell-arrows
Severity: wishlist
Tags: l10n

Hi!

Recently all the package descriptions of the libghc-* packages were
modified.

The change is basically the same for every package and it is the merging
of 2 previously different paragraphs in only 1 paragraph.

This is a major problem for the activity of the localization teams who are
working on the DDTP (Debian Description Translation Project).

It is not only that we have to retranslate all those descriptions (we
are used to follow a moving target and constantly retranslate things).

With the previous 2 paragraph structure, a first paragraph was common
and shared among all the -doc, -dev, and -prof packages. This meant that
we only had to translate one of the 3 forms once and it was
automatically used for all the translations, thus making us do less work
but also guaranteeing consistency among all the translation.

The same thing was true, though in a much smaller scale, in every
triplet of -dev, -doc, -prof packages that shared the second paragraph
with information specific to that triplet.

Since the DDTP works on a paragraph level, now each description is made
up by a different paragraph and each description has to be completely
translated from scratch. This dramatically increases, not only our work,
but also the chances of inconsistencies and mistakes in the translations
of each package description.

If there is not an important reason for the recent change, I (dare I say
"we", as the Italian localization team at least?) would strongly suggest
to go back to the 2-paragraphs structure for the package descriptions of
the libghc-* packages.

Although I am opening this bug only on haskell-arrows, please note that
this is true for all the libghc-*-{dev,doc,prof} packages.

Thanks,
beatrice