Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs

[Leslie S Satenstein]

Pete, 

Perhaps I am wrong about Transifex.  My understanding is that you have to enter your text into Transifex so that eventually the translators can get to work on translating the text to second languages.  What is the official method or software to use for submitting documentation?   Am I wrong to assume we must write using Transifex? If so, please correct me.

Re Transifex. I have some questions relative to Fedora.
 
Does Transifex allow for markups and for peer review?  Can I do that review using Transifex while commuting on the subway?  Does it show me the markup changes with comments alongside?  I did not see that "markup and peer review" are part of Transifex functionality.   

I am not belittling Transifex. It is a good tool for its purposes.  But it is not ubiquitous,  Libreoffice is.  (Actually I use Kingsoft Linux free version, It is software from China. Looks and feels like MS office). 


 
Regards 

 Leslie

Mr. Leslie Satenstein
An experienced Information Technology specialist.
50 years in IT as hardware/software/engineer.
Yesterday was a good day, today is a better day,
and tomorrow will be even better.lsatenstein at yahoo.com
SENT FROM MY OPEN SOURCE LINUX SYSTEM.




>________________________________
> From: Pete Travis <me at petetravis.com>
>To: docs at lists.fedoraproject.org 
>Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 9:59 PM
>Subject: Re: Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs
> 
>
>
>On 11/11/2013 06:22 PM, Leslie S Satenstein wrote:
>
> Hi Pete
>>Your blog below was quite appropriate.  I work in aerospace
          and do a fair amount
>>of writing and software development.  The editing department
          here is also a translation
>>department as the company is a global one, dealing with
          Chinese, Indian dialects, French, Spanish,
>>and a slew of UN national languages.  The translators want
          paragraphs of text. The English editor wants
>>text delivered double spaced 12 size font, with revision
          management enabled and comments enabled.  
>>The company uses MS word, but Libreoffice, (for Fedora's
          purpose), would suffice.
>>
>>By allowing authors to use Libreoffice, along with
          Libreoffice's revision management, I believe that a quality
>>product and a more easily and accurately translated source
          would be generated.
>>
>>Regarding installations, and expositories,  there are varying
          levels of expertise as Fedora users. Many users,
>>from my use of  forums is that they are more frequented by are
          beginners. They want a working Fedora distribution, 
>>so that they may use the tools that are included. (from
          workbenches, to business software).  I would say that the 
>>more experienced individuals do not frequent the forums too
          often, as "they know it all, and what can they learn?"
>>
>>Your ideas are great, I fully agree with them, but "when the
          only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
>>My view is that the tool you are using, with po files, is
          great for application code messages. It misses something when
>>used as the documentation preparation tool.
>>
>>Can you please try this experiment. Are you able to ask an
          author to write his stuff with Libreoffice, and then turn on
          revision managment to  send out his work for comments and
          feedback. Lets see how that works. I would even take a page or
          two of text, if it is handed to me that way.
>>
>>Libreoffice is not a barrier, since is is ubiquitous. 
>>Regards
>>
>>Leslie 
>>
>>
>>
>I don't know how to tell you any harder that Transifex is *NOT* an
    automated machine translation service. It has the ability to use
    external machine translation, but the Fedora Project does not use
    this ability. There are real people reading these strings and
    translating them into their native languages.  If you want to
    improve translations, you should contribute translations. The
    localization workflow is not broken, and the tools are excellent.
>
>Emailing LibreOffice back and forth is certainly more efficient than
    the mailing of physical paper that the workflow is modeled after. It
    is *not* an improvement over an actual distributed version control
    system.  As I've said before, use whatever editor you like - as long
    as the markup is correct and the files are saved in plain text.
>
>When I'm talking about "lowering participation barriers", I'm
    thinking that most people with active FAS accounts know how to use
    git, are familiar or can easily become familiar with
    ReStructuredText or Markdown, and occasionally can take 15 minutes
    to write up a post.  I'm not talking about restructuring everyone's
    workflow to suit your preference or enabling your criticism of
    translations. Please don't turn this discussion into a monologue of
    your storied past followed by insistence that we adopt a different
    and labor-intensive workflow because you aren't willing to learn
    what we already to. That topic has already been discussed enough.
>
>
>-- 
-- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize at fedoraproject.org
>
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