i18n blocker policy in Ubuntu
Posted by Adi | Filed under English, Free Software, Planet Ubuntu
For the last Ubuntu release (8.10 Intrepid) we had usb-creator and cruft-remover which were delivered without internationalization support. The i18n support was added later, so we do have them available for translation in Rosetta.
We all want to have Ubuntu available to everyone and in every language, so to prevent and mitigate the risk of not doing so, Milo has come up with a blueprint for adding a i18n blocker policy for new apps included in Ubuntu.
On Thursday, we (the subscribers of the blueprint) discussed about having a policy for blocking new packages for entering Ubuntu in the case they don’t have i18n support. Certainly there will be exceptions, but the main goal of this policy is to improve i18n support in Ubuntu and also raise awareness that i18n is important for us.
Basically, Ubuntu should enforce this policy on GUI apps and when we made exceptions we should raise a bug and push Ubuntu or upstream developers for implementing i18n support.
On the road back to the hotel, Sebastian was lucky enough to take a seat near Martin and explain him this issue. Due to this coincidence this new policy should be already accepted in Ubuntu :).
Tags: Free Software, Ubuntu
December 13th, 2008 at 02:10
Considering we can’t even manage to deliver translations that aren’t worse than upstream’s (see KDE packages for a particularly painful example), this seems a bit premature.
December 13th, 2008 at 02:32
I think it’s a good thing
December 13th, 2008 at 02:38
I agree we need to look after ways we can coordinate Ubuntu Tranlations teams.
At this UDS I meet many other people involved in translations and I hope that for the next release we can improve colaboration between Ubuntu tranlators teams and between Ubuntu and upstream localization projects.
If anyone had any idea about how we can improve Ubuntu translations please join ubuntu-tranlators mailinglist and let’s see what we can do
December 13th, 2008 at 04:18
Well, I suppose most people by now are creating their own respins for their ‘network’ of support. (the people that I upgrade every 6 months).
In my respin I just removed the offending packages.
I stopped wondering what the hell the desktop team is smoking long long ago. They don’t ever make any proper choices.