comps headsup: plan to drop langpacks from language-support groups in comps-f17.xml.in

[Jens-Ulrik Petersen]

Hi,

yum-langpacks has been working pretty well now for a while in Fedora,
but all langpacks are still listed conditionally in comps' language support groups
in addition to the <langpacks> meta-section.

So for F17 I'd like to remove them all from comps,
this will simplify comps a lot and if we can also
remove the resulting empty language support groups
it will also reduce the comps translation burden
in addition to comps maintenance.

A few things I noted while attempting to prune comps-f17:

- most of the remaining packages in language support group are fonts and input-methods
  - perhaps the mandatory/default ones could Provide: fonts(lang) and input-method(lang).
- normal anaconda installs support installation of multiple language support groups
  - I think it would be better to move the list of languages out of comps into anaconda itself
    (they are already translated in iso-codes, etc)
  - anaconda could then set langpack_locales to install langpacks for multiple languages
- we maybe need to add a new "yum install-lang" command say to replace "yum install @<lang>-support"
  which could use a more aggressive version of yum-langpacks to pull the required packages.
- @base and @office still list aspell-en, hunspell-en, and libreoffice-langpack-en conditionally
  which I think could be dropped.

Anyway the fact that we can remove 1500 basically redundant lines now
from comps thanks to Bill's great work on yum-langpacks is good news and
would be a big win IMHO.  This might well make a good F17 Feature.

Jens

[Ankit Patel]

On 09/09/2011 10:50 AM, Jens Petersen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> yum-langpacks has been working pretty well now for a while in Fedora,
> but all langpacks are still listed conditionally in comps' language support groups
> in addition to the<langpacks>  meta-section.
>
> So for F17 I'd like to remove them all from comps,
> this will simplify comps a lot and if we can also
> remove the resulting empty language support groups
> it will also reduce the comps translation burden
> in addition to comps maintenance.
>
> A few things I noted while attempting to prune comps-f17:
> most of the remaining packages in language support group are fonts and input-methods
> perhaps the mandatory/default ones could Provide: fonts(lang) and input-method(lang).
> normal anaconda installs support installation of multiple language support groups
> I think it would be better to move the list of languages out of comps into anaconda itself
> (they are already translated in iso-codes, etc)
> anaconda could then set langpack_locales to install langpacks for multiple languages
> we maybe need to add a new "yum install-lang" command say to replace "yum install @<lang>-support"
>  which could use a more aggressive version of yum-langpacks to pull the required packages.
> @base and @office still list aspell-en, hunspell-en, and libreoffice-langpack-en conditionally
>  which I think could be dropped.
>
> Anyway the fact that we can remove 1500 basically redundant lines now
> from comps thanks to Bill's great work on yum-langpacks is good news and
> would be a big win IMHO.  This might well make a good F17 Feature.
>
> Jens

Hi,

Related note. How about we also change the way we manage translations
for packages?

This gives more control over translations to translators also
translators become independent from package maintainers and can reduce
burden from package maintainers taking care of translations!

Shouldn't we have translations packaged independently from RPM packages?

Anybody knows, how to modify the path of message catalogs (i.e.
/usr/share/locale) dynamically while running an application? I would
like to use a different mo file rather than the default provided by
system. Is it possible? If yes, how?

Thanks!

[Dimitris Glezos]

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel
 wrote:
> Related note. How about we also change the way we manage translations
> for packages?
>
> This gives more control over translations to translators also
> translators become independent from package maintainers and can reduce
> burden from package maintainers taking care of translations!
>
> Shouldn't we have translations packaged independently from RPM packages?

This is indeed possible. We did this in MeeGo and worked quite well. Here's the
workflow we already implemented with MeeGo:

1. Developer has neither POT or PO files in git. No need to.
 2. Developer builds his package. His Makefile produces the POT on-the-fly and
    includes it in the RPM.
 3. Developer pushes his SRPM on build system. His SRPM contains one POT file
    and no PO files.
 4. Transifex Middleware App monitors the build system for updates on packages.
    It detects a new version of the Anaconda SRPM. It downloads it, extracts
    the POT file from inside and pushes it to Transifex.
 5. Transifex imports the file and notifies all translators if there are new
    strings available.
 6. Translators provide translations either offline or online.
 7. Localization packager uses Transifex client to pull all translations for
    eg. F17 and push a update on the language packs. LPacks are splitted eg. as
    fedora-langpack-ui-pt_BR etc.
 8. User sees an update on yum and installs it.

Advantages:

- Developer is isolated from the need to host translations -- less clutter in
  his repo and changelog.
- Developer does not need to remember to update his POT and pull translations,
  often forgotten (eg. the "pull fresh translations after deadline).
- L10n packager and language teams can push updates to their language any time
  they want.
- CD/DVD can include only a couple of lang packs, so smaller size. Upon
  selection of the language, yum (or even the installer) can download the lang
  pack right away.
- Process works well with release cycles, since there is a string freeze
  period.

Possible drawbacks:

- During Updates cycles (after a release is shipped): Between the time the
  developer pushes his package and the time the lang packs are updated, the
  user may see a couple of English strings on his UI. This happens also when
  the developer hosts his PO files, unless he decides to have small
  string-freezes every time (don't know anyone who does this).

- Need to take extra care to avoid having a new langpack shipped to a user
  every day, since for some countries this might cause issues).

Hope this helps.

-d

[Piotr Drąg]

2011/9/9 Ankitkumar Rameshchandra Patel :
> Related note. How about we also change the way we manage translations
> for packages?
>
> Shouldn't we have translations packaged independently from RPM packages?

Please don't do it. We had this discussion a couple of times already.
It's not worth it, it most probably won't work.