Re: Coordinating package meta-data translation

[Ludovic Courtès]

Saluton, Benno,

Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> skribis:

> On 2014-06-06 23:00, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> The GNU distribution provided by Guix contains package synopses 
>> and descriptions that we would like to translate (see [0] to get 
>> an idea.)
>
> When I first looked at the POT file of guix, about a year ago, I
> found it odd that it contained descriptions of some of the packages
> that it could install.  To me those descriptions would seem not to
> be part of the tool, but part of the things that the tool works on.
> So I would have expected them to be in a different POT file, or in
> some package database, but not in the POT file of guix.

I understand it can sound surprising, but Guix is a project to build not
only a package manager, but also a distribution that uses this tool.

Package definitions are in effect “programs”, and Guix is a library they
build upon.  Thus, both are part of the same repository, so they can
evolve together.

>> For GNU packages, synopses and descriptions are kept in sync with 
>> files from the GNU womb, which are in turn used to generate a web 
>> page [1]. Translation of this web page is already handled by the 
>> www.gnu.org translators.
>
> So these blurbs (package descriptions) are already being translated
> into different languages?  Well, then it is clear: remove those
> blurbs from the guix POT file, and, if you need them in guix, import
> them from the web-translating effort.  If you wish instead the blurbs
> to be translated at the TP, then make them into a separate POT file,
> say guix-blurbs, not a part of the main guix POT file.  Any existing
> translations I can import into the TP.

[...]

> As will be clear from the above, I would not want to synchronize but
> draw a strict dividing line: decide who should translate what, and
> use those translations everywhere where the strings occur.

Okay, that makes sense.

Honestly, I’m not thrilled by the idea of having to deal with two
translation sources.

I’d rather kindly invite :-) the www people to get all the translations
from guix.pot, given that it’s a superset of what they need.  It seems
to me that it would be simpler, but what do the www people think?

Or am I unduly scared by the fact that I lack the needed gettext foo?


Besides, would you suggest using different text domains for package
meta-data and for strings of the Guix tools?  (You seemed to imply that
above.)

>> (Note that the distro also contains synopses and descriptions for
>>  non-GNU packages, which are *not* translated elsewhere.)
>
> Ehm... which distro do you mean?  Or did you mean to say "any distro"
> or "most distros"?

I was referring to the distro we’re building: the GNU system.

Thanks,
Ludo’.