Re: Committing translations

[Alexandre Franke <alexandre franke gmail com>]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 12:02 AM, Ask Hjorth Larsen <asklarsen gmail com> wrote:
> Hello translators and other wise people

Hey Ask!

> I recently became coordinator of the Danish translation team.  I am
> now using damned lies to commit some translations.  It results in a
> bit more clicking than strictly necessary.

That's because you're doing it wrong. ;-)

> Basically we use a mailing list to facilitate the proofreading
> process, and our translators eventually send the finished files to our
> mailing list for committing.  What I do then is to go to damned lies,
> remove their reservation, upload the new file, claim that it's ready
> to be committed, and then I commit it.  This does not seem to fit 100%
> the way the system was thought out.  Is it an acceptable way to do
> things?  It is a lot of clicking to circumvent things that are
> obviously meant to be there.

Acceptable, sure. Best choice? I don't think so.

While a mailing list can be an okay tool for the job, Damned lies
really shines in that context and was designed for that workflow. It's
way better as it allows you to track the exact state of modules. You
can see what's been translated and not reviewed yet, what's reviewed
and needs to be pushed to the repos, or what is being left out by
translators. You can also use the commenting system to have a
discussion and I think this is better than a thread on a mailing list
as it keeps the relevant messages grouped together in one place on the
module page.

The fact that you can diff between the submitted files and the repos,
or the automatic merging/updating of files when new strings appear in
the module, are also killer features that you won't find in a mailing
list centered workflow.

I may be forgetting other advantages to using Damned lies, but I hope
I've made my point with what I already said.

> As an alternative I could use git directly, but I don't have a key
> registered for that.

Meh. You can do it if you decide to keep using the mailing list, but I
don't think it's a good idea.

> What do you generally do and think?

Of course each team is free to work the way they want, but I strongly
advise you to use Damned lies for the whole process. It will make your
life way easier, believe me. :-)

-- 
Alexandre Franke