Current Intrepid translation issues page

[Jeroen Vermeulen]

Gabor Kelemen wrote:

> The gweather location's translations are taken from an xml file, which
> is filled with translations at compile time. Launchpad however doesn't
> seem to export and put translations back to the sources before compiling
> the package, so updated translations are not used at all if they should
> go into xml files.

That sounds like a circular dependency: we get the translations from the 
built package in the first place.  Building packages, importing 
translations, and exporting translations are all huge jobs that need to 
run independently.  So we can't stop the build somewhere in the middle 
to import the translations, export them together with Launchpad changes, 
integrate them into the package, and continue the build.  The cycle is 
just too long for that.

So given that, the cycle really should go through upstream.  The 
application could do more to facilitate that, but ultimately it's up to 
the translators.


> That affects lots of other packages, like xkeyboard-config[1],
> compiz-fusion-plugins, gcompris, xscreensaver - just to name some. And
> the .schemas files for gnome programs using gconf are xmls too.

I don't suppose the fact that it's XML matters much: the underlying 
problem is a combination of custom formats and bidirectional feedback in 
the build procedure.


Jeroen