Fwd: a different approach to release announcements and translations thereof

[Peter Zaal]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 7:17 PM Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> I guess the process would seem very easy and natural to a developer and
> less easy and comfortable to someone who normally doesn't deal much with
> code.
>
> The easiest way might be something like this
>
> (a) create a GitHub account if you don't have one
> (b) fork the project on GitHub (there's a button to do that when you are
> logged in and open https://github.com/subsurface/subsurface.github.io
> (c) clone that repo to your local system:
>
> (this assumes a Mac or Linux - I'm sure someone else can fill in the steps
> for Windows)
> mkdir -p ~/src
> cd ~/src
> git clone https://github.com/<your-account-name>/subsurface.github.io
> cd subsurface.github.io
>
> you have now checked out the master branch. It's typically a good idea to
> keep that in sync with upstream and not modify it locally.
> git pull origin master
> will keep it in sync.
>
> (d) create a local branch when you start making changes
> git checkout master
> git pull
> git checkout -b translate494 # or whatever name you want to give that
> branch
>
> (e) copy the announcement you want to translate into the language folder,
> edit the front matter (the meta data between the two lines with dashes at
> the top "---") - make sure you don't change the 'ref' but do change the
> 'lang' tag.
> (f) add the new file
> git add nl/_drafts/xxxxx.MD
> git commit -s -a -m "translation of ..."
> git push origin translate494
>
> (g) on the GitHub website, create a pull request
>
>
> Reading this, it looks hard and scary - but it's actually just a hand full
> of steps, and most of them are only needed once.
> And frankly, with this setup I'm equally happy if you were to simply edit
> the file (i.e., create a translation) and send that text to me in an email
> and I can take care of the mechanics.
>

Ok, so now am at the point I have to admit that I am also a developer, so
this is not scary at all ;)
The reason I also asked for this is that there are probably some
translators that are not developers or that technical. And for myself, I am
a Microsoft .NET C# developer on the Windows platform, and have always been
using Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC). My team and I have just
recently started using Git repo's for version control. So I am really not
that familiar yet with Git, so it's good to have a list of steps, even if
it's just to verify I don't forget something (e.g. forking is not something
we use).


> Rest assured, this is NOT how we are going to translate the app -
> transifex is perfect for that. But the translation of the announcements was
> insanely painful for me because it involved so many manual steps that
> simply couldn't be automated with the tools available to me. That's why I
> am suggesting this change.
>
> The design with the desktop-release-bottom.MD file is indeed a bit odd.
> I'll figure out how to do this in a per-language manner. The reason for the
> existence of this include is that this is exactly the same in every
> announcement (and has been for quite a while), so it seems much easier to
> just include the text.
>

I understand it's the same content for every announcement, but still
different for every language. So it seems more natural to have a
desktop-release-bottom.MD file per language. The same as there seems to be
an about.MD file per language.


> Finally, the question about _posts and _drafts -- that's arbitrary. We
> could have the draft in the _posts folder. What makes a draft a draft is
> the fact that it doesn't have a date at the first part of the file name.
> Once we release, all I do is rename and move the files (that's a simply git
> operation) and push that change to the repo, then the files will
> automatically show up.
>

Aha, was just wondering. If this is a manual step you want/have to do, all
fine with me ;)

I'm curious what other translators think. Robert/Berthold/Stefan (German),
> Salva (Spanish), Pedro (Portuguese)... do we have anyone interested in
> doing a French translation? Any other languages I should add?
>
> Fundamentally this is making MY life an order of magnitude easier (likely
> more). But if it prevents people from translating, then it isn't worth it.
> I can look into an easier setup for people doing translations. What OS are
> you running, Peter?
>

Like I said, I am running on Windows. I will be using a tool Visual Studio
Code for editing. It's a bit like Visual Studio, the IDE we use for
Microsoft .NET development, so that is easy for me to use. Visual Studio
Code has built in support for working with Git repo's, has a markdown
previewer etc etc.
I forked the repo, created a branch and started on the dutch translation.
Will try to submit a PR tonight.

Peter
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