[development] updating translations: how valuable is user data after all?

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Ashraf Amayreh wrote:
> hmm... we would know of any web modified values if we could 
> theoretically gather all the PO files that were used on a drupal 5 
> installation, right? I know little info about PO files so apologies if 
> I'm making any wrong assumptions here. I've seen PO files distributed in 
> modules which would make this work, but I don't know how applicable this 
> is if an external PO file was used or so forth. Any ideas on 
> applicability of this?

When you update from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, you throw away your Drupal 5 
code and you get the new Drupal 6 code. We will try to educate people to 
grab the core language pack too before the upgrade. The problem is that 
we don't have the PO files used on the Drupal 5 site, if any... Many 
people translate modules they have no translation for on the web 
interface, because 'it is there'.

> In worst case, doing this technique on existing PO files is still better 
> as it will recognize some strings as "not modified" rather than either 
> considering all strings as "modified" or "not modified". It's still 
> better to use what PO files exist to get the least error margine I guess.

If only we would have the PO files used before. With most Drupal 5 
sites, the PO files are not in the webroot, because it was told to 
people to import translations by uploading a big PO file. So they have 
the data in the DB but not likely that they have the exact source PO file.

> Also, what if the modified int (not bit) had a third "unknown" value, 
> where the user could go and resolve these words? I'm really just 
> babbling some random thoughts here.

Hm, maybe we could do that for this interim period. Question is what UI 
can help users here. It should be simple and quick. (We can have a few 
languages with two dozen modules easily, which could result in many 
"unknown state" translations).

Gabor