Re: two patches

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 5/27/09 5:51 PM, "John Mandereau" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Carl D. Sorensen a écrit :
>> OK, so to make sure I understand correctly,
>> 
>> a) The changes to Documentation/de/* that move Lilypond -> LilyPond are OK
>> to commit, even though the commitish in the header of this file won't be
>> updated.
>> 
>> b) the changes to po/* are NOT Ok to commit.
>> 
>> Is this right?
>>  
> Yes. I thought all this policy was explained in the CG for a) and in
> po/README for b).
> 
> In 3.6.4 Translations management policies, Managing documentation
> translation with Git, you can read
> 
> "General maintenance may be done by anybody who knows what he does in
> documentation in all languages, without informing translators first.
> General maintenance include simple text substitutions (e.g. automated by
> sed), compilation fixes, updating Texinfo or lilypond-book commands,
> updating macros, updating ly code, fixing cross-references"

So, in this particular case, changing Lilypond to LilyPond qualifies as a
simple text subtitution, I guess?

My confusion came from not understanding that the proposed patch constituted
"General maintenance."

> 
> I highly recommend reading these policies to anybody that may apply
> patches in the future, whatever the time it takes to understand it
> (maybe more than one hour), so we don't pollute the list with
> rediscussing procedures that are direct consequences of the policies.
> However, you're welcome to discuss or help clarifying the policies after
> having read them. I know they may not be clear to non translators, but I
> need your feedback to improve them: sentences that need clarification or
> expanding, details that should be added.

I have read po/README, and I can't understand the policy.  Probably it's
because I don't really understand the .po architecture, and I'm not sure I
want to get into it at this point.

The instructions for change #2 in po/readme are probably clear for somebody
who is translating on a regular basis.  For someone like me, who has never
done anything with the .po infrastructure, it's confusing enough that I come
away with the message "Don't mess with translations.  Just clean up the
English stuff, and let the translators, with their specialized knowledge,
take care of the rest."  I know that's not what is said, but I'd be afraid
of breaking things by following those instructions.

This is not a complaint, btw.  You've asked for feedback, and I've given it
in the way that I hate it when users do for the documentation.  But unlike a
user who is trying to get particular output, I don't really *want* to
develop capability to deal with translations; I just want to avoid messing
up anybody else's translations.

As far as specific comments on po/Readme, item 2:

1) I know what it means to run 'make po-replace', so I could do that.  But I
don't know what the objective of that command is, so I'm a bit leery of
trying it out.

2) I don't know what it means to clean up the lilypond.pot header to make it
look like its previous state.  If there were an example of a before and
after, then I would have less discomfort about playing with it.

3) commit only lilypond.pot to Git and reset all .po files:  does this mean
to do 

git add po/lilypond.pot
git commit
git checkout po/*.po

Again, I could figure this out, I think, but I don't know what the desired
outcome is, so I wouldn't know if I had done it right, or how to tell if I
had done it right.

4) I know how to run make dist; this part of the instruction is reasonably
clear.

5) Upload it somewhere on the web (or wait for the release) -- I assume this
means that I need to put the tarball somewhere the FTP coordinator can get
it (that's consistent with the remainder of this sentence); but I have no
idea what 'wait for the release' means.  Does this mean that once I've fixed
lilypond.pot and reset *.po, I can wait for FTP to take action on its own
time?

6) Do we want lots of people sending notification to the FTP coordinator, or
should this be a TranslationMeister-only job?  I kind of thought that the
interface with the FTP should be pretty carefully controlled.  I assumed
that these notes were intended for the TranslationMeister, not the
FrogMeister.

I hope this has been helpful for the "grumpy" TranslationMeister.

My recommendation is that we do as you have suggested, and come up with a
section in the CG for other committers that primarily tells people who are
not members of the translation team what they need to stay away from and
what they are allowed to do.

I'd accept something as simple as "Simple text substitutions to fix typos in
the documentation can be applied to *.itely files.  No changes should be
made to the *.po files except by the Free Translation Project.  Changes to
po/lilypond.pot should be coordinated with the TranslationMeister."

With that kind of instruction, I think I could have helped Mark do the right
thing.

Thanks for all your hard work.  I hope I haven't added too much to your
load.

Carl