l10n process, en_US version, Help files

[Caolán McNamara]

On Wed, 2013-12-11 at 17:19 +0100, Sophie wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> This mail is posted to the dev list and the l10n list, please follow up
> on the l10n list.
> 
> I would like to open a discussion on the l10n workflow, the quality of
> the en_US version and the Help files. All is linked and I would like to
> discuss how we can improve the process here. I'm sure that having a
> better understanding between the l10n process and the dev process should
> help us to improve things :) So here is a proposal, it's a bit long,
> sorry for that.
> 
> *Before updating Pootle:
> - it's important for l10n team to know the approx load of work that will
> be needed to achieve the whole work. Time between beta1 and rc1 is short
> and that will help to better organize this time between translation and
> proof reading.
> - depending also on the type of changes, we could use different tools to
> optimize the work.
> 
> *When the l10n start:
> - we need a continuous communication and a planing of the updates made
> in Pootle, those translating off line are always frightened to lose
> something in the run.
> - it's exhausting when you think you are over and to see a new bunch of
> words coming. Knowing it in advance help to manage the time too
> 
> *After RC1 and l10n integration
> - we need to know when integration is made after our fixes, there is
> currently no communication on this
> 
> ==> for these three items, I have asked today to Andras and Christian
> how we can put that in place and where I can help them to do so, knowing
> also that Christian is managing this part almost alone now.
> 
> *About the en_US overall quality
> - the process to rely on the l10n team to fix the en_US version is ok,
> even if it gives us extra work to understand what is meant before we
> realized it's a mistake. So it's also error prone for all the translations.
> - but that doesn't solve the several typos that already exist and that
> are overlooked by the l10n team (e.g in the Character > Font Effect
> dialog, there is Overline _c_olor and Underline _C_olor and this is the
> same for several dialogs)
> - that doesn't solve also the lack of universal vocabulary used in
> several dialogs (e.g Tab/Pane/Panel/Deck to name the same object or
> Graphic/Picture/Image). I've nothing to propose here but to define a
> glossary where developers could pick the good word but I'm not sure it
> will be used
> 

> * About the help files
> - I always wonder why there is a Help button on a new dialog when no
> help file is appended ;)

One thing that we could with the new .ui file format is to confirm if
each dialog actually has a help entry for it. There is an easy hack at
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67350 to extract out the
new-format helpids from the help and determine if they actually exist.
That would weed out typos where the help gets detached from the thing it
documents.

Similarly someone could script if each new-format dialog has a help
entry and make a list of stuff that is missing help and turn those into
a list of tasks to document those things.

Another thing that could be automated is to generate a skeleton help
page from a new-format dialog. i.e. generate the help ids bookmarks for
the interactive widgets, buttons, checkboxes, etc. and have fill-me-in
headings and bodytext.

C.