Finally, Galician is 8^th in the po-debconf translation ranking.

What makes it special is that I have finally overtaken Spanish, so Galician is the highest-ranking language from Spain in that list :)

Also, I am now less than 200 strings away from Russian. That had not happened for a very long time… ;)

I caught Swedish, so now I’m in 9^th position. Only 269 strings left for overtaking Spanish.

Yes, I’m taking this as a competition :)

One of the things I do when I’m at home is translating debconf templates into Galician. I’m not doing bad at all. Although it’s just me working alone (by choice), mine is the 10th most complete translation, and climbing :)

I’m going to document my workflow, for two reasons: one is that others may find it useful or may suggest improvements. The other is that, in this way, I won’t depend on my bash history not being erased :)

I have a compendium with almost all strings in all debconf templates I translated, and several scripts I use to maintain that compendium, apply it to translations, etc. It is available at http://darcs.tarrio.org/gl-templates/, and can be downloaded with Darcs using this command:

$ darcs get http://darcs.tarrio.org/gl-templates/

In my local machine I keep it in $HOME/pos.

(You may use this compendium and scripts freely, if you want, but be sure to change all appearances of “gl.po” into the appropriate file name for your language.)

Nowadays I’m mostly driven by bubulle’s NMU announcements. Whenever he announces a NMU for a package I haven’t translated or whose Galician translation is outdated, I work on it.

This is what I do to start a new translation for a package called “example":

1. Extract the attached templates.pot file into $HOME/pos/example_templates.pot.
2. Bootstrap the translation with my compendium, using this command:

   $ ./bootstrap-po example_templates.pot > gl.po

   The script is smart enough to know that a file called example_templates.pot is a templates file for a package called example. However, I can specify a different package name as its second argument:

   $ ./bootstrap-po nonsensicalfilename.pot example > gl.po

3. The generated gl.po file is UTF-8 encoded. However, I use xemacs to translate, which cannot read that, so I encode it into iso-8859-1:

   $ msgconv -t iso-8859-1 gl.po -o gll.po

4. Edit the file.
5. Encode the edited file into utf-8:

   $ msgconv -t utf-8 gll.po -o gl.po

6. Add the translations to my compendium:

   $ ./add-total-po

   (My compendium is the total.po.txt file, hence the name.)

7. Optional: edit the compendium to remove obsolete strings or strings which may be ambiguous so I don’t want them in the compendium.
8. Send the translated file to the package maintainer using the BTS:

   $ ./send-po example

9. Record and push the changes to the compendium:

   $ darcs record -a
   $ darcs push -a

This is how I update an existing, outdated translation:

1. Extract the file into $HOME/pos/gl.po.
2. Most likely, it’s UTF-8 encoded. Encode it into iso-8859-1:

   $ msgconv -t iso-8859-1 gl.po -o gll.po

3. Edit the file, fix only the fuzzy translations.
4. Encode it back into UTF-8:

   $ msgconv -t utf-8 gll.po -o gl.po

5. Update the translation using the existing translated strings and the compendium:

   $ ./refresh-po gl.po | msgconv -t iso-8859-1 -o gll.po

6. Open the file. Hopefully you’ll have new fuzzy translations. Edit the translation and complete it, or do some strings then refresh again and edit and refresh again until the file is completed. If the file contains lots of similar sentences you can just translate a couple of them, refresh, and the other ones will then be all fuzzy. Magic!
7. When I’m done, encode into UTF-8, update the compendium, send to maintainer, submit changes to compendium.

I haven’t had my virtual victory lap yet, so here it is:

msgid "Unable to cw::util::transcode package display format after \"%ls\""

WTF. That’s not even proper English. How am I supposed to translate it?

No, really. My mind boggles. I’m going out for a walk in the beautiful Dublin weather.

Now, who leaked debian-private to Randall Munroe?

Just a brief note to announce that Galician has recently surpassed Brazilian Portuguese in the po-debconf translation page, and now it stands at the 11th position.

Yes, this is exciting for me :)

Only 264 strings left to catch up with Russian :)

BTW I’m in Sunnyvale (California, US) until Aug 10th. If someone wants to meet, just email me. My email address should be relatively easy to find. If it isn’t, leave a comment or something.

July 5^th, 2007 will be the 10^th anniversary of the Debian Social Contract.

Also, on July 5^th, 2007, I will be flying to Dublin to start a new job at Google Ireland the following Monday.

Today (well, technically yesterday now) was my last day at Allenta. It’s been several good years, with nice and funny coworkers (and friends), learning and doing lots of very varied stuff. However, after several years I felt a need to do something a bit different. It appears that working at Google is all the rage now, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon ;)

Oh, yeah, I’m excited about living in Dublin, and about working at Google. I already have so many plans, I’ll be happy if I manage to undertake ¹/₁₀ of them ;-)

If you live in or near Dublin and want to meet, feel free to call or email me. My Spanish phone number is in the Debian developer database or in all of my domains’ WHOIS records. My email addresses are all easy to find.

As I don’t know what kind of Internet access I’ll have outside of work (assuming I will not be out exploring the city when not working), it’ll probably be a bit hard for me to keep up with mail and with the Galician debconf template translation stuff. Today I’m in the 12^th position in the ranking, with only 12 strings left to catch the Brazilian Portuguese team. I know that the Catalan team wants revenge from when I overtook them. It’s your opportunity, nois! :-)

Today I found out that I can ad-lib a 45 minute talk about l10n in Debian.

For the record, I like the new color of the Iceweasel icon. It is certainly easier to see in the toolbar.

44 translated template files remain in the BTS. I will rest and wait for them to be uploaded.

It’s not yet the time for Russian translators to panic :-)

From the po-debconf language ranking page:

Afterwards, I will rest.

(I’m going after the 12th position. Three weeks ago I had fewer than 2800 strings translated. Not bad for a language you didn’t even know existed).

This is my proposal for a logo for Debian derivatives:

Cows are friendly, herbivorous and a great source of food. And they have acute senses of smell, hearing and sight. Plus they are considered funny by some people.

Read the logo as “Debian inside”.

When one is translating software, some times the original strings are not clear enough.

#. Type: text
#. Description
#. Menu entry
#. Use infinitive form
#: ../partman-lvm.templates:45
msgid "Delete volume group"
msgstr ""

For example, what’s this? Is this the option to delete a volume group you have selected, or is this the option to select a volume group and then delete it? Because the translation for each case would be different: “Borrar o grupo de volumes” versus “Borrar un grupo de volumes”. The difference is just a definite vs. an indefinite article.

In fact, it could have been clear in the original English text:

msgid "Delete a volume group"

or

msgid "Delete the volume group"

Well, at least it has a note saying it’s infinitive, not imperative. I won’t translate it erroneously as if it read “you, user, delete the volume group at once!”.

This message was paid for by the Platform For More Articles In Program Text.

While translating ClamAV’s debconf templates I found this:

msgid "Gracefully handle left-over Unix socket files?"

I wonder what the alternative is. Crash and burn?

This message was paid for by the Platform For Fewer Configuration Questions Through Saner Defaults.

Every once in a while, there is an argument in the debian-legal mailing list: a particular package was rejected because its license didn’t comply with the DFSG, and someone asks for Debian to relax its interpretation of the DFSG. This package, they say, is very important and useful, and the Social Contract states that users are our priority, and, after all, the DFSG are only guidelines and can be skipped every once in a while. I don’t subscribe to this line of thinking.

The DFSG are not only a set of “features” the license of a work must have to consider that work “free”: they are a list of promises to our users about what they will be able to do with everything they receive from us. For example, when DFSG#2 says that “the license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software”, this means to our users: “everything you get from Debian you’ll be authorized to modify, and then give your modified copy to anyone under the same terms as when you received your copy”.

That’s why when someone says “the DFSG are just guidelines, we can bypass them just for this very useful package” it would not be proper to actually do it, as we would not be living up to our own promises.

This post was not triggered by any particular event; I just wanted to write something not containing a doctored photo or a joke :-)

(Someone’s into vintage uniforms, and it’s not me. BTW, jacobo.age++ today).

Anthony: if that happened to me, I’d have left too.

Normally I try to be a nice person, etc., etc., but I don’t like it when it’s imposed on me.

If I’m in a channel where there’s such a charter, and some channel regulars make hostile comments towards me, I’d leave immediately as I can’t respond effectively, lest the Long Arm of the Charter descends upon me, as I know I can’t win.

Moreover, when you remind somebody about the existence of the Charter, that’s a threat: “hey, remember there’s a Charter and there are consequences for not following it”. If that happened to me, I’d leave immediately, too.

In fewer words: the existence of a charter makes the environment almost as hostile as I can bear. Add something (some loud words, a “reminder”, etc.) that increases my anxiety and I’ll leave, for I can’t win. That’s what I think happened to “anon” and “foo”.

I’ve got the tickets for the next meeting of the Spanish Cabal (NETSC). It is at the same time and place as Debconf6 (what a coincidence!), so I can kill two birds with one stone.

2006-05-13 12:30-17:15 MAD-MEX (IB6403)
2006-05-22 20:40-14:35 MEX-MAD (IB6402)

(There are also SQC-MAD and MAD-SCQ flights, but nobody’s actually interested in them. Or in the other ones, to be a realist, but I like to write stuff in my weblog.)

Now she can’t kill me as, technically, she’s not appearing in the image :-)

I can definitely see that, when Wesnoth 1.1 is out, it will cause a new decrease in productivity in Debian.

PS: Not really. Fhew!

PPS: Other suggestions were: Frozen Wesnoth, Frozen Budoku, or worse: Wesnoth Budoku.

I have just realized that it’s harder, bureaucracy-wise, to become a Debian Developer, than to obtain a firearms license in Spain.

By the way, which one is US English: “realize” or “realise"?

(Ah, and darcs rules. At least it’s easy to use.)

Now I’ll need to hide from her for a couple of days weeks months. :-)

Gentoo took our users away. Then Ubuntu drove away the developers.

Now, this will take Debian out of its misery.

If you weren’t concerned, now you should be.

Last week I finished sending out signed keys. If you were at the keysigning party and exchanged fingerprints (or, more accurately, assurances of fingerprint correctness) with me and you didn’t receive an e-mail from me with your public key signed by me, it’s probably because your mail server rejected it (overzealous SBLs, generally). But tell me, I will resend. Or re-sign. Or something.

In this webpage you can see some people who sent me their signatures but didn’t receive mine (the ones under “other signatures”). Incidentally, you can also see that I’m under 1000 in the MSD ranking (but Jordi is still below me. I will have to create a new issue of the JM magazine just to spite him.)

The post’s title was brought to you by the Spanish Cabal (nobody expects the Spanish Cabal!).

I arrived last Saturday. In Vigo I was not given a boarding pass for the Paris-CDG airport. Fortunately, there I could get to the check-in counter in time, and was even given a Business-Class seat! To make up for this, they forgot to transfer my luggage from the first plane to the second one. Jordi came with me and had his luggage delayed too (but one day more).

DebConf is unbelievably cool. Going around, reading the nametags and going “OMFG this is XXXXX!”.

As I don’t really have anything more to say at the moment, here’s a link to the photos I’m taking.

I cannot wait to arrive to HEL :-)

When Mako writes about top posters, I cannot help but think of this kind of posters:

There’s a t-shirt too…

Debconf5

By the way, I’d like to apologize in advance to the passengers of flight Air France 1098, Paris Charles de Gaulle — Helsinki on July 9th, in case your (our) flight is delayed because I have a very optimistic travel agent who believes that 65 minutes ought to be enough to make a connection in that airport. Thanks.

I’d apologize to the passengers of the return flight to Vigo on the 18th too (50 minutes), but I can’t remember the flight’s designation.

Update: Oh, the schedules in the CDG airport can be seen online, and apparently all my flights arrive at and depart from terminal 2D. Hopefully, that will mean less running around than I had foreseen. Or perhaps it’s just that I got too used to the Madhouse-Barajas airport (where they’ll lose your baggage even if your plane does not stop there).

I, too, extend my offer of a hackergotchi to everyone who wants one (just send or point me to a photo or set of photos of yours). Allow a couple of days for production, shipping and handling. We’ll discuss payment during the DebConf 5 ;-)

This is my portfolio (heh):

• 
  This is the first one I made and the shadow had to be fixed by someone else before uploading it.
• 
  There were two versions of this one.
• 
  I’m never happy with how I appear in photos.
• 
  This would be Branden’s hackergotchi if his blog were called “You like the blog. Read from the blog”. Or if there is a blog about the release of Sarge, it could become its hackergotchi ;-)

W00t! Branden has a blog!

Now he only lacks a hackergotchi to go with his blog in Planet Debian. If the blog were called “You like the blog. Read from the blog”, I’d have proposed this hackergotchi:

(Link to the bigger version).

Now, if Branden wants to send me a recent photo of his, I could make a proper one… :-)

Something I have just thought of, reading mako’s latest blog post: what about renaming the “Tentacles of Evil” test to the “Bitkeeper” test? That would help keep the flame-signal ratio high enough in case the “holier than RMS” thing wears off…

And, while we’re talking about tentacles of evil:

Congratulations Branden! ;-)

It is a common misconception that when Debian developers say “TINC” that stands for “There Is No Cabal”.

In reality it means “There Is No Consensus”. This is not always true, but some will claim TINC when there’s consensus and vice versa.

Debian’s 100,000th bug report was filed on June 7th, 2001.

The 200,000th was filed on July 4th, 2003.

On the 17th or 18th of March, 2005, we’ll probably receive the 300,000th.

(Does anyone know when the first one was filed?)

Amaya, I have recently bought the plane tickets for the Debconf 5, too (actually, my brother did). Vigo - Paris - Helsinki and return, 320 euros via Air France. As the stops in the Charles de Gaulle airport will be very short (under 1 hour), I will have to do some stretching in the planes before exiting them, as I’ll have to run! ;)

BTW, when I finish reading the book on ADO.NET (database access) I will start with the web application that Matt Kraai suggested… so don’t despair! ;-) Some skeleton design is already made, I will implement it as it is pretty generic (CRUD operations mainly) and then you’ll have the opportunity to ask for features ;-)

I think I’m going to cry. I not only understand the words of what this blog entry says, I can even understand the code! My reading .NET books is paying off!

By the way, has anyone got an idea for a simple ASP.NET web application I could create? The idea would be:

1. to learn Mono
2. to make a simple documented example of an ASP.NET application for everyone to see and comment on and learn, too :-)

I was thinking of an Internet pizza delivery service (a simple thing which would only collect orders, without the full back-end tracking pizzas, orders, drivers, etc), but if someone has thought of anything else…

On the Debian front, I’m still translating. I’m currently with d-i level 2 (applications which are not part of debian-installer itself but everyone interacts with), and when I have the iso-codes finished (country, region and language names), I will pass to level 3 :-)

I’ve finished updating the Galician translation of debian-installer —for now :-) Now it’s time to see how many packages in d-i get rebuilt before the next d-i release, including my updated translations.

I have revised all strings in the package, converting them to a formal style (the computer is not your buddy) and turning the sentence structures into another ones which are more natural in Galician (we don’t use passive forms as much as in English, and we don’t go saying “please” all the time…). They are not fully compliant with the new ortographic rules yet, but it doesn’t matter very much as the old ones are still accepted (the ortographic reform is backwards-compatible).

And, of course, I should now start translating base packages, and think about studying the new ortography…

So I vowed to never translate anything else into Galician. You know: it’s hard work, and nobody seems to appreciate it, and there was a recent change in the ortography which I haven’t digested well yet, so I basically stopped translating.

That is, until Christian Perrier came saying that the Galician translation of d-i was incomplete. And as I had made the translation of woody’s boot-floppies and I had recently been told that the new Galician translation was not very good, I decided to fix that.

(Indeed, the translation was not very good. I think that every no-no we had enumerated when we started translating and founded the “Proxecto Trasno” was there).

I intend to go on translating, but only for Debian. Don’t count on my l33t translating 5ki11z for anything else, thankyouverymuch.