On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 4:56 PM, Andrea Pescetti <pesce...@apache.org> wrote: > On 04/12/2012 Rob Weir wrote: > >> On Dec 4, 2012, at 1:46 PM, Ariel Constenla-Haile wrote: >>> >>> having all language packs built, not advertising them on our website >>> (that said, note that the dev. snapshots hosted on people.apache.org are >>> advertised on the main download page ;) ). And the goal is to point them >>> to user when they ask, or list them on the porting page, or using them >>> for ongoing translation efforts, etc. > > > This is a very good idea. Actually, I probably proposed it myself on > ooo-l10n a few months ago... But I really think that this can be an > extremely useful resource for prospective translators, and for the image of > the project in general. > > >> If we want something to be downloaded and used by the public then we >> should release it, period. We should not be looking for clever ways >> to avoid the important release steps of verifying IP, producing a >> source package and voting on it. This is what it means to be an >> Apache project. > > > We have plenty of ways to differentiate these from the packages we make > available from our download page: we could make a (monster-sized) > "multilingual build" instead of individual langpacks; we can rename the > product and make an "OOO-DEV" build; we can provide an "archive" build > (i.e., zipfiles with no installation). >
We can certainly do this, but we cannot stick them on people.apache.org and then have 1 million people in Sweden start downloading them. We can create dev builds for our own use and for testing, but when we start pointing users to them -- users, not project members -- then that is called "publishing software" and we need to do this in the framework of a release. > I see the workflow this way: > - A user opens pl.openoffice.org and finds that Polish is not available > - A warning on that page takes him to a "Your help is needed" page > - This page provides information on how to help with translations in We already do the above. > general, plus a link to the "experimental build" above where the user can > see the current level of support for Polish I disagree. We should introduce a disconnect here, to avoid 1 million uses in Poland ignoring your easily ignored caveat and overwhelming the people.apache.org server. For example, do as do do right now -- point them to an info page on how to get involved with translation. Then when they join the L10n list we can point them to the test build. > - Yes, someone might download the build and be OK with it, but we will > possibly gain translation volunteers, and they will be more motivated by > seeing in practice what "95% translated" means. And, of course, this build > will be very helpful for them when translating, so that they can use it to > see existing terminology and put untranslated strings in context. > I agree with gaining translators. But let's not take the very reasonable and basic precaution of not publisizing the unreleased test builds on people.apache.org *until* the volunteers have actually joined the list. > The download page other.html would contain something like "If you don't see > your language here, help us to get it released!" and link to the "Your help > is needed" page above. > > An important clarification: these sources have already been voted upon. I > can build the 3.4.1 sources from August with "--with lang=pl" and get > OpenOffice in Polish (well, 95% Polish and 5% English). So this is just a > build of OpenOffice 3.4.1 from the verified, voted and released sources. > But the binaries have not been released. If you want to release them then you know what needs to be done. They need to get onto Apache mirrors and/or SourceForge and we point users to that. I would have no objections to that. But I do object to publicizing to public visitors www.openoffice.org the existence of unreleased test builds on people.apache.org. -Rob > Regards, > Andrea.
