Transifex for Mozilla projects

[Fred Wenzel]

Hello everybody,

I am a software engineer at Mozilla and am working on the "Verbatim"
project, Mozilla's L10n project for websites. We've been investigating
Transifex as an option for centralizing our web site localization, and
we like it a lot.

We were wondering if someone would be willing to help us out a little
at getting a Transifex instance up and running for us. I noticed that
out of the box, I was able to point Transifex at a .po-based website
of ours and it worked great.

However, there are a few things we'd need to get into Transifex to
make it usable with our current projects.
- we have a localizable Tikiwiki instance and would like to either use
some sort of pre-checkout and pre-commit "hook" in Transifex to
convert the Tikiwiki strings into .po and back, or we could write a
new "i18n model" handler, whichever is easier.
- second, we would like our SVN history to show proper author
information even if committed through Transifex. During the course of
the Verbatim project, we've solved this problem before, and were
interested in getting this included in Transifex (as an option, not
requirement): http://micropipes.com/blog/2008/09/19/committing-to-svn-securely-from-a-web-application/
- finally, we are interested in the new online .po editor you have
launched with your last version, but quite a few of our projects
easily have (many) more than 100 strings, which I understand is your
current cut-off point.

I can file appropriate bugs and am also willing to contribute code,
but I am sure I'll have a handful of questions along the way and could
use some guidance on finding my way around the code etc.

How does this sound?

Thanks in advance,
Fred

[Og Maciel]

Hello Fred, how are you?

> [snip] finally, we are interested in the new online .po editor you have

> launched with your last version, but quite a few of our projects
> easily have (many) more than 100 strings, which I understand is your
> current cut-off point.

The current code in the development branch fixes this limitation,
thanks to some great work done by Diego! I'm not sure if you've given
the Transifex appliance a shot yet, but basically it is a software
appliance that you can download (or launch on EC2 for instance) with
all the pieces needed to run Transifex. I maintain the appliance and
have a development branch (as well as a stable version) that is in
sync with Transifex main code line. It is, in my humble opinion, a
great way to test drive Transifex in a pristine environment.

I'll let the Transifex guys chime in on the other points of your
email, but I'm really excited that you're enjoying your experience and
if you're interested in trying out the Transifex appliance, I'll be
more than glad to lend you a hand:
http://www.rpath.org/ui/#/appliances?id=http://www.rpath.org/api/products/transifex

Cheers,
--
Og B. Maciel

oma...@foresightlinux.org
ogma...@gnome.org
ogma...@ubuntu.com

GPG Keys: D5CFC202

http://www.ogmaciel.com (en_US)
http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR)

[Fred Wenzel]

Hi Og,

> The current code in the development branch fixes this limitation,
> thanks to some great work done by Diego!

Thanks, I tried out the trunk instance, and it lets me use the online
editor. Sadly, when I try to save, it shows a msgfmt error, but I
shall check out first if our .po file is malformed on trunk before
filing a bug.

> I'm not sure if you've given
> the Transifex appliance a shot yet, but basically it is a software
> appliance that you can download (or launch on EC2 for instance) with
> all the pieces needed to run Transifex. I maintain the appliance and
> have a development branch (as well as a stable version) that is in
> sync with Transifex main code line. It is, in my humble opinion, a
> great way to test drive Transifex in a pristine environment.

Thanks. I was able to install all requirements in a virtualenv, so I
didn't need the appliance, but it is good to know nonetheless.

> I'll let the Transifex guys chime in on the other points of your
> email, but I'm really excited that you're enjoying your experience

Thanks, and yes, it'd be nice if a dev answered to my other
questions :) .

Best,
Fred

[Diego Búrigo Zacarão]

Hello Fred,

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Fred Wenzel <fre...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everybody,

I am a software engineer at Mozilla and am working on the "Verbatim"
project, Mozilla's L10n project for websites. We've been investigating
Transifex as an option for centralizing our web site localization, and
we like it a lot.

Awesome!
 

We were wondering if someone would be willing to help us out a little
at getting a Transifex instance up and running for us. I noticed that
out of the box, I was able to point Transifex at a .po-based website
of ours and it worked great.

Surely. Drop by #transifex at freenode.net or send any Q here.
You also have the appliance option as Og said. :)
 

However, there are a few things we'd need to get into Transifex to
make it usable with our current projects.
- we have a localizable Tikiwiki instance and would like to either use
some sort of pre-checkout and pre-commit "hook" in Transifex to
convert the Tikiwiki strings into .po and back, or we could write a
new "i18n model" handler, whichever is easier.

This is a very interesting point. Nowadays handling wiki-based translations
is not a very easy stuff to be done and it seems that we would need to
brainstorm a lot this idea. Mainly about how would be the right way to
implement it. I'm afraid that it's not a very easy stuff to get done.
 

- second, we would like our SVN history to show proper author
information even if committed through Transifex. During the course of
the Verbatim project, we've solved this problem before, and were
interested in getting this included in Transifex (as an option, not
requirement): http://micropipes.com/blog/2008/09/19/committing-to-svn-securely-from-a-web-application/

I didn't know about that option. It seems to be pretty easy to implement it on Tx.
Actually I already have a patch to be tested.

http://pastebin.com/m60a98e29
 

- finally, we are interested in the new online .po editor you have
launched with your last version, but quite a few of our projects
easily have (many) more than 100 strings, which I understand is your
current cut-off point.

The latest code has a server-side pagination and it seems that
this problem is going away in the next major version of Tx.
Though I just realized that we could improve the validation of the forms
in the Translation Form Wizard to avoid, at least, part of the 'msgfmt -c' check
errors.

 

I can file appropriate bugs and am also willing to contribute code,
but I am sure I'll have a handful of questions along the way and could
use some guidance on finding my way around the code etc.

We have some guidelines at transifex.org that might help you for starting.
http://transifex.org/wiki/Development/Workflow
http://docs.transifex.org/development/contributing.html

If you find anything need an update, please let us know.

How does this sound?

This sounds great.
We are looking forward to have more coders contributing on Tx. :)
 

Regards,

--
Diego Búrigo Zacarão

Transifex: The Multilingual Publishing Revolution
http://www.transifex.net/ -- http://www.indifex.com/