[Fwd: Translations: String freezes, CVS converging, Packaging]

[Bill Nottingham]

Dimitris Glezos (dimitris at glezos.com) said: 
> We have two options: one, to have a big `fedora-langpack.rpm` and the other to
> split it in different languages (`fedora-langpack-de.rpm` etc).

I'll follow up on the devel list at all, but as an application author
and user, I find this to be a remarkably bad idea.

1) It divorces the translation from the application, making string
changes => .po file non-automatic.

2) It ties all the translated applications together as a whole, making
it impossible for single applications to be logically extracted for
other people to pull from, whether it's another distribution or
another project.

3) It wastes space for anyone that wants to install a subset of
the package space.

4) It ties all the translated applications together as a whole when
they have disaprate development and update cycles - some tools get
new upstream versions pushed for earlier releases, and some do not.
Attempting to track this is going to be more work for the translation
team.

5) For every language that's added, it requires modification to the
comps file t add the appropriate metadata so that the right thing
happens.

In short, I think it would be a tremendous mistake to go to this
model for Fedora.

Bill