[...]
b) Convert the current upstream French pages to po4a, and the Debian teams switches to working on that version of the translation. This would have the effect of discarding the Debian team's work as embodied in the differences between the two translations. Advantages:
- Acknowledges Alain's tremendous work, and is a clear demonstration
of goodwill by the Debian team. Disadvantages: *Alain must switch to po4a; but perhaps in the end it is worth doing that.
- Some of Debian's work is lost -- but maybe the loss is not enormous,
because Alain has been doing a lot of work comparing the two translations and changing his. (Of course, you can deduce better than me the magnitude of the current differences between the two translations.)
Actually, the Debian work would not be lost.
At the beginning, we would have two sets of PO files:
- those converted from Alain's work
- those in Debian
Then, file by file, both "parties" would need to examine the diff and do what's needed to reduce it to zero, if possible.
Would the Debian folk have the time to take on part, maybe even most, of that work?
If there's a disagreement, then the Debian package can still keep the diff (quilt makes this fairly easy to do).
I'd hope that this wouldn't happen: I can see that it would get painfuul maintaining too many diffs of this nature.
There could even be cases where a Debian-specific diff could be well worth it even if there is *no* disagreement (think about the behaviour of a given utility being different in Debian....we have such cases in shadow, for instance)
Yes, that's clear. The Debian translation must mirror the Debian original pages, which include some diffs from upstream.
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- Alain must switch to po4a; but perhaps in the end it is worth doing that.
Are there any possibilities other than those I've listed above?
And I can't resist asking: which of these options could each side consider as viable?
I think that b) is the most reasonable, indeed. I fully understand that, saying so, we're saying "switch to PO" to Alain....:-)
There is one more piece in all of this: even if the teams can combine their efforts, can they keep up with me. You are all volunteers (I assume); currently I'm working full time on man-pages. Alain estimates that each of my weekly releases typically requires two days of translation work. Obviously, that is unsustainable for him. But equally obviously, if it is unsustainable for you all when sharing the work as a team, then there's little point in encouraging Alain to go through the work of switching to new tools.
Cheers,
Michael