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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE_2_0_BRANCH: kdelibs/khtml/rendering
From:       Marko Samastur <markos () elite ! org>
Date:       2000-10-21 19:43:19
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Andreas Pour wrote:
> 
> If I can weigh in on the release discussion.  I think it would be better
> not to delay branch forking/releasing b/c of translation issues.  I
> would prefer a model similar to what is going on with the KDE 2.0
> branching -- the basic system (English only) is stablized and released.
> OK, not everyone in the world can use this release, but many people can
> -- most importantly, people who are most likely to develop for it and/or
> to make useful bug reports -- developer types -- are quite likely to
> speak English.  Then the translators have several weeks to translate it,
> at which time serious bug fixes are made to it.  After this period it
> becomes the "full" release.

The only problem with this is that translations will NEVER be finished
then.
 
> This approach would permit more frequent updates to the system as
> development isn't essentially halted while translation occurs.  It just
> seems forcing all translations to be done before releasing appears to be
> very disruptive to the development process with no real gain.  Basically
> it's splitting distribution into two pipes instead of the current single
> one -- you don't have to be a computer architect to recognize the
> efficiencies.
> 
> The distributions can wait for the international version to have
> stabilized before they ship, as they need the translations.

Guess what, at least some of them don't. For example Red Hat (the one I
am most familiar with) NEVER upgraded their translations. They used
original and weren't ready to change those that came with 1.1.2. I can't
say I blame them though, because I'd do the same thing. I expect the
release to be more or less finished, but you never know what you get
from CVS.

Even if it's only Red Hat that's doing this (and I doubt it), they still
have distribution which is most popular around here and people will
still associate the quality of KDE with what they get and not what's out
there.

Btw, I believe this is also the reason why Kmail and other programs,
that are part of the distribution, are so old. Newer versions were never
released in a way most KDE users expect (as a part of official package).
But this is a problem that will probably go away now.

In short, if you want something to be picked up in distributions,
release it OFFICIALLY (even if it's just a i18n release of already
released code). Otherwise you are wasting some people's (in this case
translators) time.

Thanks for listening,

	Marko

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