Re: totem string freeze breakages

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Åegan)]

Yesterday at 22:56, Christian Rose wrote:

>> The strings addition were to add filters to Totem:
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318350
>> and
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170226
>>
>> The string change (although it hasn't been mentioned directly in a bug)
>> means that user now know that the location can't be played, rather than
>> the type of file (this only affects the xine-lib backend which isn't in
>> the Desktop release, per se).
>
> It's five messages that are affected if I'm correct. This is very late
> in the process, but then again, it's fairly simple messages, and it
> seems that they actually fix bugs.
> The actual string changes are fine with me, although obviously I am in
> no way happy about how they happened.
>
> Danilo might be of another opinion, though.

Yeah, I do.  These are not bug-fixes in its own sense[1], but more like
"enhancements".  I understand that Bastien wants to get enhancements
out to the masses as soon as possible, but that's why we have 6-month
release cycle!

[1] Totem has been like this forever, right? There was no regression
to be fixed at all, and it's not about a feature that got introduced
just before 2.12 release so it couldn't be noticed earlier.


However, you do need only single GTP spokesperson approval, so
Christian's might be enough (which doesn't change the fact that I'd
still consider it inappropriate string freeze breakage).  What's else,
if this truly affects only xine-lib backend, it's even more
inappropriate: we are asking all maintainers not to do any string
changes even if they are not going to be seen, because it makes our
work harder (there is no mechanism for translators to track which
messages will or will not be seen, so we have to translate them all:
if you next add another message which will be seen by everybody in the
UI, we wouldn't be able to tell it apart from these).  And don't
forget this might affect docs (and their translations) as well!

To conclude, it's not only about what makes sense from your POV, but
also what makes sense from translators' POV (which is not simply "we
don't want to translate anymore", but includes other things like "our
tools have their limitations", etc.): the idea of freezes is that we
don't have to explain our reasons over and over again (which we still,
unfortunately, end up doing almost every time :(), because GTP has 
explained it once, and the Gnome community at large recognised our
needs.  

If you still feel comfortable making work harder for 60+ of Gnome's
regular contributors, it's your choice to make: we can't force you to
do anything.


Cheers,
Danilo