Summary

We discussed:

• Feedback regarding the current ubuntu-docs translation process

• Status of Kubuntu and Xubuntu docs

• Naming of translation templates for translation on Launchpad

• How can we translate help files and other docs and training materials
• How can we collaborate for translating Ubuntu Learning Materials and Ubuntu Packaging Guide

• Presentation of the doctemplate project by Kyle Nitzsche

  • A new/developing LP project (lp.net/doctemplate) that provides a documentation template that can be added to packages or used for stand alone docs. Source is docbook article or book. It's fully localizable (images and strings), with pdf, html, html-with-javascript and docbook outputs. Also, discuss integration with LP: translation work flow, and possible LP improvements: Documentation tab, Doc privileges and assignment (like translations), import/export to/from LP, LP for image localization, LP display of localized content

Current status

• ubuntu-docs are actively maintained
• kubuntu-docs translations are not currently maintained due to lack of time
• xubuntu-docs translations have no known maintainer

Template names

Translation templates in Ubuntu are shown in a big list at https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu. As the Launchpad Translations team will be focusing on providing better upstream integration, there will be no changes in terms of how translations are displayed for this cycle.

This means that if templates have the same name (as in some of them in kubuntu-docs and ubuntu-docs), they are shown as if they were duplicate, which is confusing for translators e.g.:

add-applications
add-applications
printing
printing

We decided to prefix those templates with the source package name in order to tell them apart, following the scheme already proposed some time ago and also used in some other packages (e.g. ubiquity-ubuntu-, debian-installer-). This scheme involves prepending the source package name to the template, which using the previous example would be:

ubuntu-docs-add-applications
kubuntu-docs-add-applications
ubuntu-docs-printing
kubuntu-docs-printing

This will imply no additional work for the maintainers, simply the template name will be renamed in Launchpad (the templates in the source packages can keep their original names, and will be automatically imported to the right template in Launchpad when uploading the package).

Kubuntu docs

We acknowledged the fact that due to lack of time Kubuntu docs translations were not released for Karmic, and before going further, we'd like to thank Richard Johnson and Jonathan Jesse for their work on Kubuntu docs.

Some translation teams, notably the Hungarian team, made an extra effort to complete translations for the Kubuntu documentation. Although by Richard and Jonathan's comments the current release needs improvement and presents some bugs, it would be worth adding the translations in a Stable Release Update (SRU).

There is an open bug to track this, and we'd like to move this update forward:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kubuntu-docs/+bug/459476

Xubuntu docs

We talked to Jim Campbell and decided to move the xubuntu-docs translations out of the Ubuntu distro series and to a separate project in Launchpad.

This is due to the fact that the xubuntu-docs package is no longer in main, which is a requirement for translations to be there (and for templates to be updated upon package upload).

The templates in e.g. https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/xubuntu-docs were not up to date and were only there because they hadn't been disabled until now.

The advantages in having translations in a separate branch will be mainly for maintainers: they will no longer have to worry about updating templates (they'll be updated in Launchpad upon commit) or exporting translations (they will be automatically commited to a branch daily) - this functionality is not yet available in source packages.

The only disadvantage will be that the translations will not have as much visibility as they had inside the Ubuntu distro series in Launchpad before.

The translations team will offer any help required in this migration, which will involve:

1. Disabling the xubuntu-docs templates in the Karmic and Jaunty distro series translations in Launchpad (Lucid as well, altough they are not yet visible)
2. Exporting current translations
3. Set up the xubuntu-docs bzr branch for translations (with automatic bzr import and exports)
4. Commit the exported translations to that branch, which will make them available in Launchpad
5. Announce the changes to ubuntu-translators and ubuntu-doc

There is a bug filed to track the progress of this task -> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/489285

Doctemplate project

Kyle Nitzsche made a presentation of doctemplate. Doctemplate (now packaged and built in the ppa) enables a user, with a single command, to set up a single-source, localizable (images and translations) docbook article or book with a build system that immediately allows generation of localized docbook, pdf and html. The guiding philosophy is: simplicity with full capabilities, or, in other words, let writers write, let doctemplate handle the techy bits.

Actions

Session notes

 * Feedback regarding the current ubuntu-docs translation process
  * ubuntu-docs are ok, mdke actively maintaining it - we should document the manual work required to fully translate the front page (Assistive tools)
  * kubuntu-docs does not have an active maintenance of translations
  * xubuntu-docs has no maintainer at all (translations)
  * Naming of translation templates for translation on Launchpad

 * Presentation of the doctemplate project (KyleNitzsche)
  * A new/developing LP project (lp.net/doctemplate) that provides a documentation template that can be added to packages or used for stand alone docs. Source is docbook article or book. It's fully localizable (images and strings), with pdf, html, html-with-javascript and docbook outputs. Also, discuss integration with LP: translation work flow, and possible LP improvements: Documentation tab, Doc privileges and assignment (like translations), import/export to/from LP, LP for image localization, LP display of localized content
  * Intention: make it easy to write a docbook document that it is easy to translate and to produce output in different formats: HTML, PDF, etc.
  * The technologies for conversion are known, but there is no clear process on how to actually produce this end result
  * Striving for simplicity
  * Configuration files to specify the best sets of fonts to embed to PDF documents depending on the language
  

 * See how we can translate help files and other docs and training materials
 * See how we can collaborate for translating Ubuntu Learning Materials and Ubuntu Packaging Guide

== Actions ==

 * Update kubuntu-docs templates (Adi/David)
 * We'd like to move the xubuntu-docs templates to an external project (Adi)
 * We'll rename the kubuntu-docs and ubuntu-docs templates (ubuntu-/kubuntu- prefix) - this will be transparent to the maintainers

CategoryTranslations