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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Documentation Disasters
From:       Lauri Watts <lauri () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-03-05 16:42:10
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On Monday 04 March 2002 19.48, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 09:13:53AM +0100, Martin Konold wrote:
> > Hi,

> > Please explain to me way the simple roll-back features of CVS are
> > not sufficient for Lauri?
>
> I remember something like a commit being processed by automatically
> run scripts which commit in lots of other places.
> I.e. the rollback is too basic; all the other files have to be found
> manually and rollback-ed as well. Also taking into account that work
> might have been commited as well...

That's pretty much the gist of it.

One english source file --> generated .pot template file --> this gets 
copied to a .po messages file, which is both partially generated (or 
rather, merged, from the template file) and also worked on and 
committed by the translators --> generated docbook in the target 
language.  (Coolo, did I finally get that right myself?)

It's a complex mixture of generated files, manually edited files, some 
that are both partly generated and partly edited, and scripted merges 
between them all, with a liberal helping of voodoo, and it's all both 
timing sensitive and spread across multiple directories in different 
modules of CVS.

The worst of the problem is when the original source file and the 
template file get out of synch (the time between the doc being updated 
and a new template generated), and also in the intervening time, a 
translator commits new translated messages to the .po files.  When the 
next msgmerge runs, all hell breaks loose, and it rarely ends well from 
the translation side.   This is where we can be a little more careful 
on all sides, and just a little more coordination will

The really important thing to bear in mind: Although it's sensitive, and 
complicated, it also works very much more often than it doesn't, and 
when it works, it's spectacularly good.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts

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