Re: [gnome-nl] Status of the Ubuntu Docs in Natty+Oneiric

[Hannie <lafeber-dumoleyn2 zonnet nl>]

We, Ubuntu Dutch Translators, are currently translating gnome-user-docs, the Ubuntu Desktop Guide you get when you press F1 in Ubuntu Natty (with Unity), https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/natty/+source/gnome-user-docs/+pots/gnome-user-docs-gnome-help/nl/.
But following the discussion on this subject, see discussions below, I am not sure what I'll get when I press F1 in Oneiric. If gnome-user-docs is no longer going to be used in Oneiric (Unity), there is no point in continuing translating the Natty version, since we are not far from the Oneiric release. On the other hand, if it will be used in Oneiric, finishing the Natty version is important because it is likely that most of the strings will also appear in the Oneiric version.
Another issue is the upstream translation. I can upload the Launchpad translation, once it is finished on Launchpad, to Gnome-nl. But I want to know if, in the LP document, there are strings added for the Ubuntu users only.
And as for ubuntu-docs, https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu-docs/natty/+lang/nl, is this what is called the new topic-based help help ("Desktop Help"), and will this be used in Oneiric?
Regards,
Hannie

Recently, Matthew East wrote:
============
1. In oneiric this material, gnome-user-docs (ubuntu), will be shipped in our ubuntu-docs package.
2. In Oneiric we will use gnome-user-docs for something else (shipping upstream docs for gnome-shell).
3. Please translate the Natty version. The translations will be included in language packs as announced on the mailing list. The oneiric version is not ready yet - please don't translate that until announced on the mailing list later in the release cycle.You can upload upstream translations to Launchpad. About half of the strings in the template are the same as in the upstream template, if I recall correctly.

===========================

Discussions on Status of the Ubuntu Docs in Natty:

Dear translators,

In the ubuntu-docs team we've decided to move to translating in our
upstream project instead of in the Ubuntu package.

The reason for this is that it allows us to push updated templates to
Launchpad for translation immediately and automatically in our bzr
branch, rather than having to upload them to the Ubuntu archive or
upload them manually to Launchpad. This will help us particularly when
doing post-release updates.

We have enabled Launchpad's new translation sharing feature so that
translation can in fact go on in both places.

See https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu-docs. For the time being
I've enabled translations in the following series: lucid, maverick and
natty. These are the series for which we expect to issue stable
release updates with translations in the future. We haven't yet
enabled translations in oneiric (because it is too early to start
translation there).

In summary, please use the upstream project for translating Ubuntu
documentation in future.

Please note that the gnome-user-docs translation - which contains the
core desktop documentation for *natty only* - will continue to happen
in the Ubuntu package because the upstream project (Gnome) doesn't use
Launchpad for translation.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Op 25-02-11 21:20, Shaun McCance schreef:

On Fri, 2011-02-25 at 20:46 +0100, David Planella wrote:

Hi all,

I've been checking out the yelp version in Natty this week, and apart
from watching in awe the increase in speed, I've also been wondering
about the status of the Ubuntu docs and their translations, especially
after the discussions regarding the project direction a few weeks ago.

I've noticed that there isn't any front page for the Ubuntu docs yet,
and that currently launching yelp shows the GNOME desktop guide in
English (I'll have to investigate why this happens, I suspect it might
be a problem on the translations packaging or importing side).

Are you referring to the new topic-based help ("Desktop Help")
or the old user guide ("Desktop User Guide")? The default was
changed pretty recently, and I'm not sure what build of Yelp
you're using.

If it's the topic-based help, there are no translations right
now. So that would explain why you're seeing English. Otherwise,
if there's a problem with the localized document lookup, please
let me know. That would be a very critical bug.

As for the Ubuntu docs being the front page, the idea was that
the Desktop Help would just be able to be that for all distros,
and that extra pages could be added when it makes sense. That
was a really good plan a year ago. But just as we finally got
the technical bits in place, Ubuntu is switching to Unity as
a default desktop. So the GNOME Desktop Help is probably not
going to be a good base document.

Ubuntu is probably going to need its own main help document,
as it's had in the past. Let's figure out how to best make
that work.

1) Ubuntu could just ensure that, in every bit of code that
wants to display the desktop help, Yelp is called with a URI.

  Pro: no patching to Yelp.
  Con: Some code somewhere might get missed.

2) Ubuntu could patch Yelp to have a different default URI.
I think this is what's been done in the past. It could be a
good patch. Or I could make the default document a setting,
and it could be a schema patch. It's a patch either way.

  Pro: pretty straight-forward.
  Con: Yelp will still load the Unity-based desktop help
  for users who choose to download stock GNOME.

3) Yelp could have some desktop detection, and choose the
default URI accordingly. There's no standard way to find
this information. There've been sporadic xdg-list threads
on the topic. It's always shot down. We might be able to
do some sort of process or service detection.

  Pro: paves the way for Yelp to be used as-is to serve
  other desktops.
  Con: probably only ever going to be 90% accurate.

My priority is making sure that people get accurate and
useful help, regardless of what desktop or distro they're
running. So whatever it takes to make that happen, that's
what I'll do.

Thanks,
Shaun

On 18-04-11 Matthew East wrote:

We've discussed this on a bug report and an ubuntu-docs mailing list
thread with David, but I should also have posted to ubuntu-translators
about it.

A brief summary is that we have been very late this release with
updating the documentation and are having to use all the time we have
available just to ensure that Natty will have some documentation. In
order to do this we are adapting the new Gnome 3 user documentation to
fit Unity's interface, and are shipping this in the package
gnome-user-docs. The documentation in ubuntu-docs will still be
shipped, but it will be used as fall back documentation for those
looking for help on the "Ubuntu Classic" interface.

Unfortunately this last minute work means that we will not be able to
ship with translated documentation in this release. However we have
committed to post-release documentation updates which will include
translations.

Thank you for your patience and our apologies for this mess. However
we had to take a decision between shipping translated documentation
from Maverick or trying to update at least the English documentation,
and the latter option was the lesser of two evils.

David - the templates for gnome-user-docs in Launchpad need to be
corrected. The ones available should be "gnome-help" and "user-guide".

(This email is about Ubuntu, not Kubuntu.)