[Mailman-i18n] Pootle introduction

[Barry Warsaw]

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Hi Clytie,

This was extremely helpful, thanks!  I've captured this on the wiki:

http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Pootle+primer

Just a couple of comments.

> DOWNLOADING
>
> The Pootle docs (Docs and Help link, or [3]) contain everything you  
> need to know about Pootle, so please read them. However, I'll go on  
> with a summary here.
>
> You can download your translation file(s) at any time from your  
> Pootle project directory. Look for the "Zip Archive" link at the top  
> of the page, to download a whole directory of files, or for the "PO  
> format" link next to each file (when you've clicked on Show Editing  
> Functions), to download a single file. As you can see, you can  
> download your file in different formats.

Ah, downloading was buried on the Show Editing Functions page.  I knew  
I had to be missing it!

> Barry, if you want to download all the PO files at once, you're  
> better off downloading them from bzr. Pootle splits the files into  
> language-projects.

When you say "download from bzr", I'm not sure what you mean.  Does  
Pootle's bzr integration actually publish its own branches?  If so,  
that would be very cool!

Ideally, I'd like for the translators to just do their thing, without  
regard to Mailman's release cycle.  (In practice though, we should  
give them a heads up of course.)  When we're ready to release we Push  
A Button to grab all the current translations and package them up into  
whatever form we need.  We can probably automate it all, screen  
scraping if we have to (though that sucks), but if we had access to  
those files through bzr, that would rock.

If possible, I'm sure we could set up a fake user on Launchpad for  
Pootle to push branches to, say once per day.  That would also be very  
cool because then we wouldn't have to fear for Cristobal's machine  
crashing.

> UPLOADING
>
> If you have upload rights, each directory will include a file  
> selection field and button in the top right-hand corner of the page.  
> You can choose to Merge or Overwrite files. Unless your Pootle  
> server is overloaded, you should use Merge, to avoid overwriting  
> changes that have occurred since you downloaded your file. The  
> changes are processed immediately: you can start editing that merged  
> file as soon as you have uploaded it.
>
> Barry, I strongly suggest we keep the most current files on Pootle  
> (Mailman 3.0?), even for testing. We can upload all the different  
> branches, as well, but our translation effort is best spent working  
> on the current files.

Agreed.  I really want to split the translations out of the main tree  
anyway, so I'm happy if they live on the Pootle server, or even  
better, on Launchpad.  As part of our release process, we can grab and  
combine everything.

> BACKUP
>
> Pootle is just a part of your workflow: please backup your work!  
> Although Pootle does backup its day's work, it doesn't backup every  
> single string as soon as you enter it. This would take up too much  
> of its resources. So it's always wise to download your file or  
> directory when you finish your editing session. That way, you have a  
> local copy of your changes. You can take that away, and edit it  
> offline, then merge it back up to Pootle again, later.

Does Pootle back the files up off-site?  See the push-to-Launchpad idea.

> Firstly, please read the introductory docs and try out the  
> interface. If you have further questions, you're welcome to ask them  
> here.

One other thing I think we need to be careful of.  I've been sadly too  
lax about this in the past, but we can do better now.  Let's make sure  
that any translator we give permission to has signed the necessary  
papers with the FSF.

http://translationproject.org/html/whydisclaim.html

If a translator has already disclaimed their translations, they'll be  
listed on this page:

http://translationproject.org/html/authors.html

I'll urge all Mailman translators to go ahead and send the disclaimer  
form now.

Cheers,
- -Barry

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