> [: bruno :] > Translators, proofreaders and commiters do hopefully not have to be in > computer science domain. I am not a programmer and not used to git. If i > have to read the git manual before committing, it would be very > discouraging. Source version control (with Git or any other tool) is here only circumstantial to the actual issue, which has nothing to do with programming. And this issue can be described with the following question: can two people work on the same PO file at the same time, and if yes, how? I consider this question as still being open. If the answer is "no", then authors should not touch PO files. They should only disable PO files when invalid (whatever that means in the particular context) and notify the translator in charge. For both of these actions, means as automatic as possible should be sought. (And on translators' side, locking mechanisms, either technical or organizational, should be established.) If the answer is "yes", then the the "how" must be answered. It is not sufficient to relegate "how" to standard version control procedures, treating PO files as any other source file. Technically, because a PO file is not pure source file, but half-derived half-source, and has only weak line-level semantics; together this precludes line-level diffing, which is the core of version control procedures. Organizationally, because true source files are typically small and rarely under immediate interest of more than one author, whereas many translators can meaningfully modify a given PO file (unless it covers a topic which requires a specialized translator); this makes PO file conflicts much more likely. -- Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)
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