LXDE Blog

Launchpad or Transifex? What is the best system for LXDE?

With the increase of LXDE components and the ongoing development of LXDE the need for a better translation system has increased. We discussed different option in this forum here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=35

We have set up a vote for you to cast which system and solution you prefer. Please vote in this forum: http://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=163

There are three options:

1. Launchpad

2. Transifex at fedorahosted.org

3. Transifex hosted at lxde.org

Some quotes from the forum:

cwickert:
Launchpad
Pros:
* large user base, this means a lot of potential translators
* beginner-friendly
Cons:
* bad workflow for getting translations upstream
* getting translations into a a new release requires manual intervention: It has to be downloaded from launchpad and added to LXDE’s SVN.
* known to produce bad translations. This is the downside of being beginner-friendly

Transifex
Pros:
* More professional
* works with nearly every VCS: CVS, SVN, git, …
* Translations are automagically pushed back to upstream’s VCS
Cons:
* Requires ether to be set up on a server (which also mean maintainance) or to use fedorahosted.org
* Smaller userbase

Elias: I think Transifex is better for this project, because the development of LXDE is not made in Launchpad. Launchpad is not (afaik) so flexible than Transifex.

cwickert: If we use fedorahosted we are bound to the Fedora accounts system (just like we are bound to Launchpad user management), if we setup our own transifex we can manage users ourselves more easily.

ogmaciel: I’d like to support the idea of using Transifex and host it with Fedora projects (unless someone has the time and hardware/bandwith). All pros/cons already cited are a pretty good list but the one that imho is the most important is the fact that translations should always be done upstream, and then trickle down to distros. Transifex plus a good quality control process before committing files (more about that later) will allow for a quick, efficient, and top quality translation process.

For a better coordination of translations of LXDE we have started the LXDE Translation Project. Please also join the Translations Mailing list.

Transifex: http://transifex.org
Launchpad: https://launchpad.net
Forum for voting: http://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=163
LXDE Translation Project: http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Category:Translations
LXDE Translations Mailing list: http://mailinglist.lxde.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/translation

Mario Behling

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2 responses to “Launchpad or Transifex? What is the best system for LXDE?”

  1. Hi all, I am a Launchpad developer, and would like to stress a few points.

    – Launchpad can be effectively used for upstream projects; many of them already are using it, and those translations are not necessarily in any relationship with Ubuntu translations (that part of process is up to Ubuntu to decide, Launchpad is just a tool)

    – Launchpad has a good quality control in place: all translations go through suggest/review process (they are first suggested, then reviewed), if project owners want it that way (privileges can be set up in a more fine-grained way as well)

    – Launchpad currently lacks syncing with any source code branches, and we are planning on working on this soon; I understand how this can be a major problem for any upstream project, but getting tarballs and uploading POTs shouldn’t be such a big deal (with many of them though, it can, so we have some scripts to help you with that)

    – We do manual first-time approval of POTs so far, because they are commonly bad or wrong; after the first-time approval, they are recognized by the system in the future and no manual intervention is required if you follow a few simple policies (like using the same filename and paths if you have more than one); if you’ve run into problems with this, please email me at danilo@canonical.com and we can resolve it ASAP

    Also, I’d like to mention that in the near future (next few months), we will support doing translations of several releases at the same time. This will enable translators to do the work more easily by doing it only once for messages that are common between eg. 0.3.* and 0.4.* (or whatever you keep doing releases of). They’d still be able to diverge, but I doubt many will want to.

    Anyway, according to voting results so far (9:1 for local installation of Transifex over Launchpad), it seems your interests have swayed one way already, but if you need further help in the future, or need more stuff clarified (eg. about how to best set LXDE up in Launchpad), feel free to contact me at danilo@canonical.com.

    Cheers,
    Danilo

  2. Btw, sorry for not joining the forum and posting there: I believe that might seem too intruding, so if I am totally off-base, please accept my apologies.