Rosetta/bzr (was: What is an Upstream?)

[kiko at async.com.br]

(Carlos, Danilo: please help me pick out bugs that may need to be filed
from this thread)

On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 12:31:12PM +0000, Tim Morley wrote:
>    On 7 Nov 2006, at 09:01, Dominik Zablotny wrote:
>      <IMHO>
>      "Best practice" would be shutting down Rosetta and putting .po files in
>      version control system like bzr, then creating some cute extension for
>      kbabel or potool to make beginners feel more comfortable.
>      Until it takes over all the world, Rosetta is a barier in collaboration.
>      </IMHO>
> 
>    Hear hear! Until we can trace who translated what, with the option of
>    reverting it; until we have (at least the option of) comments accompanying
>    changes; until we can trace the evolution of a translation, noting whose
>    contribution gave us what: I don't see how Rosetta can hope to produce
>    good quality translations.

Not to say I don't agree that history is a required feature for good QA,
I'd just like to point out that Rosetta /does/ keep a full translation
history for each individual string in the database. It's true that we
haven't disclosed part of that information until recently, and that we
could display it in a "history-friendly" manner (but currently don't).
The truth is, though, that we have really good infrastructure but only
average-power tools to manipulate the data that is there. This will
change over the coming months as we focus on tools to make QA and
collaboration much easier.

>    people who wouldn't otherwise have been able or been bothered; but this
>    came at the price of now having no idea who translated what, having no
>    accompanying notes saying e.g. "This translation is just a best guess;
>    feel free to suggest something different", or alternatively, "Here is a
>    list of quality references backing up this translation", so we now have to
>    go through and double-check everything, even things that the original
>    translator has already researched and checked in detail, because we've no
>    way of *knowing* that any given entry has already been researched and
>    checked.

So from this paragraph, for a checklist of features that you'd like to
be able to better manage translations:

    - Who contributed an approved translation (implemented)
    - Who approved a contributed translations (to be rolled out next week)
    - Whether the translation should be reviewed or not (implemented)
    - Translator notes/whiteboard for each string (planned but not
      implemented)

Is that correct, excluding the part about knowing an entry has been
checked?

For the "already checked" part I've got a question. Currently the way
Rosetta works is, if you are using moderated mode, that anybody can
contribute a translation, but it won't actually be used until somebody
who is in the translation team approves it. We know there are
limitations and confusions that stem from the fact that the translation
team isn't clearly a review team, but if that was solved, do you think
we'd still have this sort of problem? In other words, is the fact that a
translation has been approved by a reviewer (and you know who he is)
enough for you to be happy that it has been properly verified? Perhaps
that in addition to a whiteboard?

Take care,
-- 
Christian Robottom Reis | http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 3361 2331