Re: KDE translation - a critical point

[Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa>]

On Yaum al-Ahad 15 Shawwal 1425 8:35 pm, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 19:43 +0300, Munzir Taha wrote:

> > Another example:
> >
> > kdebase/kio_imap4 is 0% translated on arabeyes
> > kdebase/kio_imap4 almost translated on KDE
>
> Yes, and guess what happened there? You removed the file apparently ;)

I am really happy with this. This proves to you that the script is sooo bugy. 
I never removed a file unless told by your script to remove it. You can prove 
this very easily. Just co the revision on arabeyes cvs at the point I ran 
your script and co kde-main as you showed me and see for yourself how this 
file would be generated as a file to be removed.

Actually, every one who deals with cvs knows by heart that everything is 
recorded. I could  never do such a thing on purpose unless I am an insane, 
stupid and nasty person. Do you really think that I am that person?

Elzubeir, I would remind you again. You told me to run the scripts. I did.
We found files that should be removed still there and files that should be 
added not there. I asked you to do it yourself thinking that it may be my 
fault. You did while we are chatting on IRC and when you told me it's ready 
then, instantly, I showed you many problems. There you are convinced with the 
problem and told me you will check the script. Am I also cheating that 
time?

> ----------------------------
> revision 1.28
> date: 2004/11/22 13:17:20;  author: obeid;  state: dead;  lines: +0 -0
> - Sync'ing with 3_3
> ----------------------------

> Notice how it says 'state: dead'. That means you have removed it. Since
> it was removed, when I did the sync for the second time after you, it
> naturally copied the pot file, assuming there was never a .po version of
> it.

The script should check for a .po file everywhere on KDE repository even attic 
in case that the file is translated before and removed by accident or moved 
to another place.

Example:
RCS file: /home/arabeyes/cvs/translate/kde/kdesdk/Attic/kfilereplace.po,v
Working file: translate/kde/kdesdk/kfilereplace.po
head: 1.10
branch:
locks: strict
access list:
symbolic names:
        KDE_3_3: 1.9.0.2
keyword substitution: kv
total revisions: 11;    selected revisions: 11
description:
----------------------------
revision 1.10
date: 2004/10/14 15:56:07;  author: elzubeir;  state: dead;  lines: +0 -0
Sync'ing with KDE_3_3_BRANCH
----------------------------
revision 1.8
date: 2004/07/25 12:17:46;  author: obeid;  state: Exp;  lines: +271 -300
[On Behalf Of: tabbaa]
- 221 translated messages.
----------------------------

You see the file is also dead and it's you who did the sync. The file is 
actually changed place form kdesdk to kdewebdev. So, I end up translating a 
file with 221 difficult strings wasting precious hours in a file Ammar Tabba 
(from our team) translated in our last KDE translation project from KACST. 
There are other examples, too.

> Yup, I'm sure you did. You also removed it.

> I can also go on explaining what you did wrong with the sync (I have no
> idea how you managed to remove the file though).

Which file? Isn't cvs remove file.po and then cvs commit file.po would remove 
any file?

> Other than instances 
> such as this, everything else is 'okay'. We are not at a 'critical'
> point. Seriously, we are not.

If you can remember when Isam was the maintainer doing the commits and the 
merges, I thought it was him who is responsible for all those missing 
translations. I posted many files here as examples of our problems. I have 
never used your scripts that time. Now I did, I know for sure that the script 
doesn't check all possibilities and even worse would let you or others think I 
am playing a bad game with you. More time is going to be wasted to prove that 
I am an innocent guy. Sigh!

If you still believe that it's me who is doing a mess to files, I will have to 
ask Karouri the only person here I know who knows me well and is genious 
enough to track every hacker, cracker or a malfunctioning script.


> For one, KDE administrators refused to create a user for 'arabeyes' on
> their CVS server. Their rationale? There must be a single person to
> blame for bad translations, etc. So, when I request for a CVS account
> for you, it means that there is another person accessing KDE's CVS
> directly. Quite frankly, seeing how you have dealt with our own CVS
> server (removing files that should not have been removed), I'm not sure
> having direct access to our files on KDE's CVS server is such a good
> idea.

I know I might gain a KDE CVS account if I negotiate the matter with them. The 
problem is we are here to translate KDE so arabeyes would continue doing the 
translation and review it. KACST just wants to help by but not intending to 
continue doing this. So, it's not wise to negotiate having a direct CVS 
access to work just for 3 weeks and then stop it. In the long run arabeyes 
has better do the maintainership. If KACST wants to take maintainership of 
projects, there are many important open source software there that are just 
waiting for someone to take maintainership. We could go maintain them. Now, I 
believe this could be a better alternative for us on next projects. We had 
better not touch anything under arabeyes hands. Long live the various 
projects out there!

> Yes, and had you submitted a PR when I have asked you to, most of this
> would have been resolved by now. But, you chose to instead wait around
> on IRC.. especially that you know I am not the author of the script (and
> it's not written in a language I can modify).

I haven't submitted a bug just because I was extremely busy trying to resovle 
the issues under my hand and you told me you are going to check this 
issue and really I didn't know how to prove that it's broken. Is it wise just 
to file a bug saying a script is broken? Up to this minute I have no simple 
way to show you the problems except to ask you to do a sync now using the 
scripts and I will show you some examples of files that are not sync'ed as I 
did before on IRC to prove it.

> I guess it is bad planning on starting such projects from KACST's side.
> It's not like you are not aware of how we do things. If you want to
> build a car, you don't just get some metal and rubber and create a car.
> You first have to design it.

Again?

-- 
Munzir Taha  PGP Key available
gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.mandrakesecure.net F0671821

Telecommunications and Electronics Engineer
Mandrake Club Member
Maintainer of the Open Arabic Bugs Project at
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/OpenBugs
Maintainer of Fedora Arabic Translation Project
CIW Designer, ICDL, MOUS, Linux+, LPI 101
New Horizons CLC, Riyadh, SA