Vidalia translations should be updated with every new bundle release
Currently, Vidalia translations are only updated when new versions of Vidalia are released which may take long time and could result in incomplete translations or annoying mistakes.
Since many Tor users depend on bundles to get Tor running, I suggest rebuilding Vidalia with up-to-date translations on every new bundle release.
Trac:
Username: OsamaK
Activity
Interesting idea.
I wonder if there's any downside here -- for example:
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if we get reports of wrong translations, we know what version of Vidalia was included, but now we don't know what version of Vidalia had this string.
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The components in TBB have the original versions of each application, or at least try to. Rebuilding it each time means that the signature by the Vidalia maintainer is not so meaningful.
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When we pull in the translations, that's typically a manual step right now, and people have a chance of looking through them to see if the Turkish translation just says "Tor is a chicken" over and over. The more we automate the process, the more likely somebody sticks in easter eggs.
I guess point 2 argues for making the translated strings be an external resource that Vidalia can pull in at run-time. My guess is that would be messy to get right.
Another option is to put out Vidalia releases more often. Now that we have a more active maintainer we've got at least a shot at that.
I assume you'd also want the Torbutton strings to be updated each time?
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To solve the version issue, maybe we can include a build number in the version string, for example: Vidalia 0.2.12 (Build 3).
To solve the checking issue, maybe we can grant translation maintainers a restricted write access on a repo to pull in their translations. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how it's possible for someone to be sure that a certain edit is (or is not) offensive.
And it's nice to have an active maintainer, but I wonder if it's a good idea to associate updating Vidalia translations with releasing new Vidalia versions anyway because it's possible that Vidalia won't be released very often any time in the future. On the other hand, we will always have new bundle releases.
And yes, this can include the Torbutton.
Trac:
Username: OsamaKOsamaK -- do you still think we should do this, given that Vidalia releases a bit more frequently now than it did a year ago? I don't have a good sense of how frequently Vidalia translations change or what the benefits of this are right now. I'd be really concerned about Tomás making a lot of changes that required new translations and me releasing a bundle that pulled those (inappropriate) ones for the currently released version of Vidalia.
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Status: new to needs_information