Re: major libgweather Locations updates

[Александър Шопов <ash contact bg>]

But how to act rational in an irrational world?

Oh, my dear. You have taken the rational high ground now, have you? 

I did complain loudly last time this geographical nightmare was put on
translators:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2005-August/msg00358.html

Mostly the same words, sans the linuxhaters.

What did that get me?

The interfaces of official modules in Gnome 2.24 currently comprise
41870 strings. libgweather po-locations: 5115 strings which is more than
12% of it. (Technically there is the main libgweather po-file with
another 179 strings but this is trifle, I will not add this to the 5115
geographical strings). 

This makes it the biggest module in official Gnome: Evolution takes the
second place with 5017 strings. Let us compare this with some other
modules. The single module represented in http://progress.gnome.org that
is larger than libgweather is Gimp, *provided* we lump together all its
modules: gimp-tips, gimp-script-fu, gimp-libgimp, gimp-python,
gimp-plug-ins, UI - 6725 strings, which is 31% larger. If we take just
the largest module in gimp (gimp-plug-ins) - it is just 55% of
libgweather po-locations. Is the functionality of Gimp and Evolution
even comparable with libgweather po-locations in terms of strings? 

This is bigger that any module in the translation project
(http://translationproject.org/team/bg.html barring the
unicode-han-translation and unicode-translation, but they are more like
whole dictionaries).

The module is about 8% of current KDE 4.1 and even more for OpenOffice
(sadly I cannot find their statics, I am just quoting from memory - I
have talked about l18n with Bulgarian OO.o guys).

We only managed to translate the libgweather module last time because we
happened to have on our team a very meticulous person - Yavor Doganov,
who also happened to work in a ship transportation business and
patiently for several months produced the translation because he knew
how most of these terms are pronounced and found about the others. And
in Bulgarian when we translate geographical terms we do so on the basis
of local pronunciation - we do not transliterate, we transcribe. How far
are you willing to push the translators in finding such information? Do
all teams have ship transportation meticulous people? Lucky them. Yavor
is currently very busy with many other tasks.

So what can I do? As a coordinator I can just simply somewhat relocate
resources - I cannot make people translate, they are volunteers.

And relocating now really means forgetting about libgweather
po-locations for it is not a fun module to translate and there are many
external dependencies for Gnome today (for example conduit).

Our team does not have the resources to translate libgweather
po-locations. And it is not necessary for a nice experience with Gnome
but it is way overrepresented in statistics.

This module most probably should have been coordinated with KDE
(http://kgeography.berlios.de/). And preferably the module would either
go to freedesktop.org or preferably the translation project since
cataloging places and translating them in many languages is besides the
main purpose of a graphical environment.

Many means could have been used to prevent the extensive growth - for
example making the developers find out the IPA pronunciation in the
native tongue of the majority of people living in the place. In fact -
any manual thing that would have prevented automatic scraping of
geographic places. If developers of libgweather really know these places
- I really, really envy them their knowledge.

And as far as I know my country people - if a Bulgarian is in a
different place, they are far more likely to seek the local name of the
place in libgweather po-locations, rather than the transcription that
our team would present.

So what other options do I really have besides complaining loudly and
stepping on egos? Maybe kind advice, rational talk, some bugzilla magic?
Writing poetry or walking the walk instead of talking the talk? 

Interesting, where should I walk to? Maybe run away from?

I hope you realize that this message is far worse than my previous one,
for it is insane that I should have to explain this.

... sanity, shmanity ...

... language not appreciated ...

Bleah.

Being reprimanded like a 4 grader was wonderful. I have not felt so
young in ages. Two wrinkles disappeared.

al_shopov

Note to myself: Do not forget to pull the plaits of girls tomorrow.