When coming back from holidays, on Aug. 15th, I sent a long proposal about improvements to the D-I i18n/l10n work methods.

This proposal could be resumed to two main points:

1) move towards the use of a single file for all "core" D-I packages translations

2) better categorize what we currently call "second stage" and "third stage"

Point 1) is aimed at offering a strong simplification to translators work, especially those who are the only translator for their language.

Point 2) is aimed at having a better overview of the translation status of the whole Debian installation process, from the user point of view, and help translators prioritize their work

Two weeks after, it is time for me to make a progress status about these projects.

1) Transition to a "master file" --------------------------------

Technically speaking, the scripts/l10n/l10-sync script is the core component of this process.

I have worked as deeply as possible for improving it in order to make it robust to potential conflicts (avoidn commiting files with conflict markers) while minimizing the number of commit it makes.

This has been nearly achieved and the generated noise is now quite low, except in one case : when an upstream package has changed templates, the script will make one commit per handled language. I'll work on improving this, but at low priority.

The script now runs on my own system, every 3 hours, at 0:00, 3:00 and so on (UTC).

The next goal is having it run on a Debian system, probably gluck. This needs some investigation, though, as the script uses po-debconf utilities, which are not available on Woody.

At the moment I write this, 22 languages are handled through this "new" system. This means that 21 still use the old system. Most of these are "one translator teams".

The current number of strings in the PO files is 1246 while the combined size of all D-I packages is over 1400 strings, IIRC (the difference are identical strings in different packages).

A few members of translation teams have expressed concerns about this new scheme, including some in the French team. The main argument against this scheme is more problems for dispatching the work and update work. Especially when it comes at update management, I'm not completely convinced that multiple files are easier to handle....and I'm convinced they're more subject to inconsistencies.

Anyway, I respect the translation teams work methods and I'm currently thinking about a system allowing both work methods.

Denis Barbier objected that the problem of PO files spread all around the D-I repository is solved by the special repository set by Joey Hess by using SVN hooks. This repository is IMHO really too slow for being easy to use as a work basis.

Another argument I want to emphasize for the new method is the documentation : currently, documenting the translation work is quite complicated and needs explaining how to get the material for each package and how the work should be prioritized. With the new method, this is just "pick up template.pot, rename it to xx.po and commit back the new file".

Anyway, the work will continue during the next weeks. I have asked to remaining "single" translators about their agreement for switching their language. I will soon talk more closer about this with the translation teams (German, Dutch, Chinese, Portuguese (both), Italian, Spanish...).

The D-I RC2 process and the associated string freeze will certainly give us a better idea about the robustness of the whole system and how it helps in translators work.

2) New way of counting the progress -----------------------------------

I have proposed a new scheme, replacing the current "stages". The rationale are the curernt inconsistencies in the way we have sorted translations into either 2nd or 3rd stage. Another rationale is being able to count the number of complete translations for a full Debian base system (which is what the user really sees).

The proposal divided translations in "levels", with 4 levels:

1 : core D-I files 2 : all packages which prompt users during a *default* install at high priority for a Debian base system 3 : all packages which prompt users during other type of installs of a Debian base system 4 : all packages which *output* messages during any type of install for a Debian base system

No progress has been made yet on that subject. this needs some redesign of the translation status pages and some rewrite of Dennis Stampfer scripts which maintain this page. The new status page needs to be operational while the old one is still used.

Dennis began to work on the design of this script and I hope that some first versions will soon show up. Unfortunately, repetitive SVN/haydn repository flaws didn't help in this work.

This will be the next priority during the next weeks.

3) Documentation ----------------

I have finalised the new i18n documentation version. Please review it in installer/doc/i18n/i18n.xml. Built HTML and TXT files are available in the same directory.

Please be aware that this file documents some currently *not* existing methods, mostly the "levels" system.