Bug#335381: (forw) [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#335381: [INTL:uk] Updated Ukrainian program translation

[Christian Perrier]

> > Because when it has to be done for several packages/software, each one
> > with its own building process, it becomes pretty unmanageable.
> 
> Describe this .. what is unmanageable ?
> (about .pot files: all GNOME projects do not include .pot in repo. IIRC 
> all GNU projects also. IMO less than few % SF projests stores .pot files)

Translators are *not*, I repeat *not*, hackers. So doing everything to
actually help them in their work is making their work easier.

It may actually involve keeping POT files in revision control, yes.

Gnome has a nice i18n infrastructure to anyway re-generate POT files
from the source and make them available in one form or another.

How do you actually expect someone to start a translation work for
shadow is no POT is provided. Expecting new translators to actually
generate POT files with a cryptic xgettext command line is just
dreaming. Moreover, this cryptic command line is not even provided in
a Makefile....

I have daily exchanges with people wanting to do translation work for
new languages. Most often, these people have absolutely no skills to
be able to figure out how to start by themselves and we must provide
them with the POT.

This is why we have this:

http://people.debian.org/~seppy/d-i/level4/POT/

The POT there is generated from your source. But for each software we
list there, we have to figure out how to generate it, and code this
into the scripts that generate these files.

This is highly painful...just because maintainers do not want to keep
POT files in their RCS.....


> But in CVS is ready to translate not .pot file but .po files.
> .pot file it is _only_ for merging current changes in *c and other files. 
> .pot files are used also on prepare new translation .. nothing more (it 
> is temporary resource).


Yes, tis makes *two* uses:

-keep PO files up-to-date
-allow new translations to start

Seems a fairly important task, isn't it?

By the way, PO files are currently outdated in the CVS. Regenerating
them gives one fuzzy string on files that seem complete such as the
French translation.