Re: how to get more recent translations for important web pages

[Holger Wansing]

[Adding debian-www to the loop]

Hi,

Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org> wrote (Sun, 3 Dec 2023 00:08:21 +0100):
> I would not vote too strict against the removal of outdated translations,
> in fact I did that some years ago for German as well, due to lack of
> manpower in the German team.
> You don't get applause for such initiative, it's an unthankful job.
>
> That being said, I could imagine a timeframe from ~6 months for this
> to be senseful?
>
> On the other hand, it occurred to me, if it's possible, to only change the
> filename from let's say index.wml to index.wml.old instead of removing the
> file (assuming that the wml build process of the website ignores such
> files; did not check that).
> That would make it very easy for translators, to catch up with their work,
> if they find time.
> Of course you might say "Hey, the file is not lost, we have a git repo
> here! No need for such trick."
> That's of course correct, but translators might not be as familiar with
> such advanced usage of git as DDs are.
> So I think it would be worse it.

I have tested this for ../german/releases/trixie/installmanual.wml,
renamed that into installmanual.outdated and that works, the page gets
removed from the web, and otherwise no errors on the webwml build.
So, maybe that would be a possible "solution", instead of removing the
translation files completely?


Holger

--
Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 20:59:08 +0100, Holger Wansing <hwan...@mailbox.org> said:

> [Adding debian-www to the loop]
> Hi,

>> On the other hand, it occurred to me, if it's possible, to only change the
>> filename from let's say index.wml to index.wml.old instead of removing the
>> file (assuming that the wml build process of the website ignores such
>> files; did not check that).
>> That would make it very easy for translators, to catch up with their work,
>> if they find time.
>> Of course you might say "Hey, the file is not lost, we have a git repo
>> here! No need for such trick."
>> That's of course correct, but translators might not be as familiar with
>> such advanced usage of git as DDs are.
>> So I think it would be worse it.

The only advantage I see, is that you see that there's an old
translation, for those were we will catch up with the renaming. In the
end the translators always have to use git. Having an .outdated file they need to use
$ git mv xxx.outdated xxxx

I we delete the file they could use a simple 2-line shell script we
provide for them:

#! /bin/bash

hash=$(git log -- $1|head -1|awk '{print $2 "~1" }')
git checkout $hash -- $1

Let's call it undo-delete <filename>

> I have tested this for ../german/releases/trixie/installmanual.wml,
> renamed that into installmanual.outdated and that works, the page gets
> removed from the web, and otherwise no errors on the webwml build.
> So, maybe that would be a possible "solution", instead of removing the
> translation files completely?

We still have the problem, that we might have to rename ALL deleted
files. Otherwise the translators could never rely on seeing a
.outdated file. What if there's no .outdated? Then they have to parse through the git
log and check if there's nevertheless an old deleted translation.

One more point: Does thi work for a complete deleted subdirectory, as I did
some time ago with tamil, albanian,...

I'm not against your solution and I think we should give it a try and
then after a year see if this helps to get more recent
translations. Then we can made a new decision if we want continue this workflow.

--
viele Grüße Thomas