Re: String/UI freeze and crying wolf

[Stanislav Visnovsky <visnovsky nenya ms mff cuni cz>]

On 25 May 2002, Glynn Foster wrote:

> Hey,
>
> > Also the large effort done by the ui-review team showed us a big lack of
> > consistency and quality control of the UI as a whole. It would be sad if
> > all this work wasn't included in the release.
>
> Okay, I guess I am to blame for all the confusion...and I'm sad that I
> didn't think of it earlier. Ideally we should set about planning this
> type of review on a regular basis - but that takes time, a whole lot of
> energy/motivation/enthusiasm and it's besides the point.

A release schedule for next GNOME should contain statement about
usability/consistency review dates = soft message freeze (meaning for
translators: only minor changes). I think the major milestone for
developers should be the feature freeze.

Problem is, that the review itself is very time-consuming and needs to be
done for each release (but GNOME 2.0 is kind of special IMHO).

>
> > So - what can be done?
>
> Calum has gone through the entire list of changes [1] and set realistic
> milestones for each change. Most of the changes are *very* low impact
> changes - ie. the only bug that it will probably create is 'bugging the
> translators'.
>
> I think we should try and organize a definitive list for all these
> changes and have some of the translators look over it to make sure that
> they can cope with the changes. By 'cope' I mean avoid having to
> translate it into a 30 word setence ;)

I'm volunteering to help with this.

>
> I feel it's right that we should try and stick to the GNOME 2.0 release
> dates and the present freezes but obviously if these dates [and I hope
> they don't] slip then it would be a real pity not to have gotten these
> changes in earlier.

If you can commit your changes really soon (let's say May 31st) and the
translators are aware about the changes and deadlines...

Best regards

Stanislav