Documentation proposal

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Jannis Pohlmann wrote:

> BTW, we'd have the same copy + synchronization issue with a wiki-based
> solution. I still don't think .po files are the best way to go for
> continuous text like e.g. user guide. The only benefit we get is better
> synchronization. The downside is that translating paragraphs out of
> context (in .po files) is less fun. And we'd still have some of the
> markup in those strings, so why not go with copies right from the
> beginning?

Yeah, I always wondered about that.  I know that our translators are 
very familiar with the .po translation workflow, but it seems like 
translating free flow prose that way is just, well... really stupid.

Related to synchronisation, the main benefit is that it's easier to tell 
what's changed -- that is, if I go and change one sentence in the 
English docs, rebuilding the .po files will make it very easy for the 
translator to figure out what I changed without having to read through 
the entire doc.

How do translators deal with the website translations?  Does that seem 
to work well?  Maybe we should use that as a model?

> The focus should be on having complete and up to date English
> documentation. That's quite a challenge already. 

Agreed.  While we don't want to make life harder for translators, I want 
to see the English docs improved first and foremost.  Historically, the 
docs aren't really translated at all.  In the 5+ years I've been with 
Xfce, the only doc translations I'd seen until recently (by recently I 
mean the past 6 months) were out-of-date French translations.  Clearly 
the current setup (po-doc) doesn't work well for the translators...

	-b