On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 07:25 +0200, Ludvig Ericson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Sep 1, 2008, at 21:20, Alex_Gaynor wrote: > > r8805 added a new string to django, sorry for adding it so late in the > > game. > > Not much of a freeze now, is it? :-) I realise you are probably only joking, but it's important to realise now and in the future what is going on here...
It is a string freeze: absolutely *none* of the existing strings marked for translation have changed. Zero. They are completely frozen. We have been extremely careful about that. Adding new strings is always going to be a possibility and the two times it has happened was done after consideration as to whether anything else was possible. Remember that you are just seeing the final step in the process. We made sure that only one string was added in this case (instead of two). We made sure that there was no similar, already translated string we could have used instead. We make sure that any updated PO files are committed as soon as practical (which doesn't take zero amounts of time). We must add an error message to the code, since this was new, necessary functionality that could fail in a couple of different ways. So the choice is whether to mark it for translation or not and it isn't really a choice at all. Of course we mark it for translation. If you do absolutely nothing, as I mentioned the other day, you are no worse off. No translation work you have done has been undone. All the strings that were previously translated will still be translated and the string that was not translated will still appear in English. However, you now have the option of also translating this extra message is you would like to. If we didn't mark it for translation, you would also have no change in your strings (same as now), except without this extra option. There is absolutely no downside. Unless you somehow view "Oh no, I'm not at 100% any more" as a downside, which is never going to be a consideration. That is focusing on the entirely wrong thing. Our users don't care about that. They care about whether the strings they are seeing are translated into their locale. Remember, seriously, that if all you see is the message saying a new message has been added, you are only viewing the tiniest tip of the iceberg of the work that went into requiring that string to be added. Translations are important, but they are just one cog in the huge piece of machinery. We have all been relatively lucky that only three or four strings have been added. On many projects, it can be much worse than that. I am exceedingly grateful and impressed by all the translation work going on, but understand what is going on when you see one of these "a new string has been added" mails. You can completely ignore them and be no worse off. Regards, Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django I18N" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Django-I18N?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
