[Mageia-i18n] Transifex discussion

[Remco Rijnders]

Dear all,

In last thursdays meeting on IRC the sole topic of discussion was the 
evaluation of the use of transifex for our translation work. This 
discussion was part of our general debriefing / post mortem of the 
translation process leading up to the first official release of Mageia.

The general concensus of this meeting was that transifex is a useful tool 
for the i18n process and quite userfriendly to use, especially to those 
less familiar with tools like subversion for the translation process. That 
said, in this meeting quite some missing features came up that would make 
transifex much more useful to us if available.

This email is intended to summarize the findings of this meeting and to 
invite both those who were and weren't present in that discussion to add 
their views and opinions on the subject. Once the discussion is finished 
we can hopefully come to a list of suggestions and improvement 
opportunities for transifex and our use of it. Once we have the list, we 
can see which opportunities are already available but not used by us yet, 
which opportunities are already identified and worked on by upstream, and 
which 'new' features we'd like to see. For the new features we can file 
requests in the upstream ticket system for transifex. For new features and 
already requested but not yet implemented features we can hopefully also 
contribute to the discussion and development of these features as time and 
skills permit.

Findings:

- When uploads from .po files from svn fail, no clear error message is 
   given. This makes it harder to learn what the issue with the file is.
- Translation credits are an issue still. Upstream has indicated a fix for 
   this. When can we expect to see this in our version of transifex?
- Some unclarity exists on the integration between transifex and our svn 
   repositories. This integration is possible, but not yet configured for 
   us. An additional question is if this integration should be both ways or 
   one-way (from svn to transifex).
- Proofreading features are missing. It is hard to see what has recently 
   changed in a project. As a result, a proofreading consists of the entire 
   .po file instead of just the changed strings.
- tx does offer 'suggestions' instead of general comments. Unfortunately 
   they have to be browsed individually and are not easily searchable.
- 'diff' functionality should be available in transifex and not only in 
   svn. This would massively improve usability for us.
- 'fuzzy' strings are emptied by transifex. Better handling of fuzzy 
   strings would require less work by and confusion for translators.
- More collaboration features are needed. For example, the opportunity to 
   add comments to a project and not just a string. e.g. "I have reviewed 
   the first 200 strings".

Other wishes not directly related to transifex:

- It would be useful that whenever a .pot file changes, a summary or diff 
   of the changes is sent to the i18n-mailinglist.

Please feel free to give your input on any of the above, give corrections, 
or additions for any things I might have missed.

Sincerely,

Remco
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