Shutting down Verbatim and the Transition to Pontoon

[Matjaz Horvat]

Dear localizers,


TL;DR

We're shutting down Verbatim and moving all projects to Pontoon over
the coming months. If you haven't used Verbatim, please keep on
reading.


BACKGROUND

Verbatim is based on an old version of Pootle with various
mozilla-specific modifications. Pootle itself changed a lot, and our
modifications turned out hard to carry forward. As you know, it also
has a few outstanding issues, mostly related to working with
repositories, that are affecting us (localizers) and also project
developers.

Initially we tried to upgrade Verbatim to a more recent version of
Pootle, but we failed for various reasons. A few days ago, decision
was made to discontinue Verbatim, and to take contributions to these
projects through Pontoon. We are highly encouraging teams to make the
transition to Pontoon, but switching to Pootle for localizing web
projects will also be an option.

Transition to Pontoon gives us a few additional benefits:
* Pontoon merges translations from Version Control and from the web
interface every hour. You can work on both version control directly,
and on Pontoon.
* The repositories stay the single source of truth, stronger with
Pontoon than they were with Verbatim.


CURRENT STATUS

About a third of active locales using Verbatim have already switched
to Pontoon spontaneously or are in the middle of that process.

For the rest of locales, we'll start migrating the first batch of
projects next month. We'll keep you posted.

We have a few blockers left, the most important one being giving you
enough time to prepare for the migration. We'll be also updating our
permission system to make it more similar to Verbatim. See the
Etherpad for more details about technical blockers:
https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/verbatim-pontoon


CALL TO ACTION

1) Start using Pontoon by having one or more of your projects migrated
now, which you can easily request by selecting a project and then
clicking on "Add":
https://pontoon.mozilla.org/projects/

2) If you find any bugs or miss any features, please report them now
and we'll try to fix them early, if they are making transition from
Verbatim hard for you:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Webtools&component=Pontoon

3) We'll be migrating all translations, including attributions
(contributor stats). We will not however migrate suggestions, so now's
the good time to incorporate or discard any suggestions in Verbatim
and keep them to near zero.

If you have any questions or concerns, we'd be happy to address them.

Cheers,
Matjaž

[Kohei Yoshino]

I'm almost new to Pontoon. How can I download/upload .po files like Verbatim? I thought there was such an ability before.

-Kohei

[Matjaz Horvat]

Hi Kohei,

You can't do any of these things through Pontoon. If you need to
download/upload files, please use repository directly.

-Matjaž

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[Kohei Yoshino]

Okay, I'm not sure I have write access to each repository but will try later.

Thanks,
-Kohei

[Mohamed Hafez]

Hi Matjaž,

when check the etherpad i don't found Arabic language in the list of "*locales
moved / **middle of moving / **at least one project moved" *and there no
project included int the https://pontoon.mozilla.org/ar/

*.*
is Arabic locales will transfer to pontoon?

Cheers,

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[Matjaz Horvat]

Hi Mohamed,

All locales will be migrated to Pontoon eventually, including Arabic.

Some have sent requests to be migrated early. These are the ones you
see on the Etherpad, with a few more queueing in my inbox. Together
that's over half of active locales.

You can request projects to be moved to Pontoon by sending me an email
or directly from Pontoon:
http://pontoon.mozilla.org/projects/ -> select project -> click add ->
select your locale.

I'm taking this opportunity to thank everyone for being early adopters! :)

Thanks,
Matjaž

[Khaled Hosny]

I’m just wondering (not knowing what Verbatim or Pontoon are), what
Arabic projects were using Verbatim and will be migrated to Pontoon?

Regards,
Khaled

[Matjaz Horvat]

Khaled, the following projects are enabled for ar in Verbatim:
http://localize.mozilla.org/ar/

-Matjaž

[Khaled Hosny]

Thanks.

[Baadur Jobava]

Hello again.

I hope you don't delete Verbatim, even if it's taken offline! The database
contains valuable data and history, as well as email addresses for past
contributors. While we determine what data can be anonymized or what can be
released to team leaders, PLEASE preserve the Verbatim database, as well as
any past backups that may have been made from it.

Thanks.

Jobava

[Matjaz Horvat]

Hey Jobava,

We'll keep Verbatim DB backup as noted on the Etherpad and will let
you know once it's available.

-Matjaž