Translation of .schemas files in core modules

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Close to or during the 2.0.0 string freeze (don't remember which),
support for translation of .schemas files was added to intltool. If this
should be adopted gnome-wide this unfortunately meant that several
hundreds of new messages would be added for the translators to translate
in the middle of the string freeze, and after discussion we agreed upon
that this could wait until after the freeze.

Unfortunately, this was forgotten, and here we are again, in the middle
of the next string freeze. Damien Donlon was kind enough to add bug
reports so we'll not forget it again (thanks!):

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89354 (gnome-media)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89361 (gnome-control-center)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89362 (nautilus)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89363 (gnome-applets)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89364 (libgnome)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89365 (eog)
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89366 (gnome-games)

However, the question remains whether this breaks string freeze and/or
should be fixed now.

Regarding the string freeze, it can be argued that these are all just
bug fixes and not adds new messages per se (it just appears that way to
translators).

In any case, my personal opinion is that the fixes for these bugs should
wait until after this string freeze anyway(*), unless there will be
additional time given to translators to translate these messages.

The rationale behind that is that it's a lot of additional messages (110
for gnome-games alone) and since they are only displayed in schemas,
they are probably not as important as many other messages to the
end-users localization experience. Also, there isn't much difference in
the end result between these bugs being fixed now and no extra time
given to translators, and this being punted for later. The end result
will be close to the same. :-(

But the main reason is that adding these messages now will result in the
translation status report
(http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/status/) to become close to
useless for translators. The translation status report only displays the
percentage and number of untranslated messages, it doesn't rank them
after importance. So anyone wanting to make sure all important messages
are translated in time for 2.0.1 will have big trouble. Important
messages that are highly visible in the user interface will be
indistinguishable in the stats from schemas messages that are not that
important, and this in the most critical time when we are trying to make
sure that all important messages are translated for 2.0.1.

Of course, everyone's opinion may be different...

Christian


(*) Naturally, there's nothing that I know of stopping this from being
fixed in HEAD right away for those modules that have a gnome-2-0 branch.