Pidgin 2.7.2 released!

[Ethan Blanton]

Javier Fernandez-Sanguino spake unto us the following wisdom:
> On 26 July 2010 15:17, Ethan Blanton <eblanton at cs.ohiou.edu> wrote:
> > I think maybe you're confused about exactly what happened.  The
> > translated .po file for Pidgin itself *was* included in the install.
> > It is selectable from the installer, and Pidgin can be run in Spanish
> > with no difficulties.  The *only* thing which is not translated is the
> > installer itself.  Spanish is not disabled.  No registry hackage is
> > required.
> 
> Maybe you are confused by my explanation. Let me try again:

OK, sort of.

> The installer will not show "Spanish" (actually 'Español') in the
> language selection screen when installing *if* the installation's
> system translation is not updated (>50%). However, when the installer
> if you cannot select "Spanish" as a language in the installation
> system the installer also:
> 
> - does not automatically select the 'es' Localization component

Automatically is the key word here.  You certainly can select it.  I
agree with your point below that this requires people to know their
way around the installer; I haven't *used* the installer, so I don't
know why this selection is hard to find.

I don't know how hard it is to modify the NSIS installer, but assuming
it is possible, what would you think about an installer which was
localized only if >50% complete, but which defaulted to the system
language for the installed Pidgin?

Note that it appears to me, from the outside, that the biggest problem
is that this 50% requirement was sort of injected without warning at
the same time as the NSIS strrings were added to the potfile, and on a
time frame which did not allow many translators to get their
translations updated.  The NSIS installer was previously not
translated via the pofile mechanism, so when it was moved *to* this
mechanism for 2.7.1, in many cases it was in poor shape.  Moving it
into the pofile mechanism will, we believe, allow us to maintain
better installer translations on Windows; the purpose of this move was
precisely *because* the Unix strings were well translated but the
NSIS installer was very poorly translated in many languages.

The NSIS installer strings were moved to the .pot on 5/20, and 2.7.1
was released on 2.7.9 with both the new translations and the 50%
requirement.  2.7.2 did not update translations.  It is my feeling
that this short update window and the subsequent long period of time
without substantial translation updates is the real "problem" here.

> As I said, the "languages" shown by the Win32 installer should be
> shown based on wether the *program* itself is translated or not, not
> whether the installation system is fully translated or not. And, in
> any case, disabling languages already available in past releases
> should not be done automatically without forewarning the translators.

There are two issues here; the first, showing of languages in the
win32 installer, *is* the way you want.  Spanish is fully selectable
in the installer, because Pidgin has a Spanish translation.  The
installer itself simply won't use Spanish.

The second is sort-of-yes sort-of-no.  We did not disable any Pidgin
translations.  We do not disable maintained Pidgin translations.  We
will not, in the future, do so.  We did not anticipate the installer
translations producing this kind of response, for several reasons.
1) It appeared that many-to-most of the installer translations were
not by the main translation teams for each language.  From their point
of view, it should simply have appeared that new strings became
translatable.  2) Pidgin is *still installable* in the languages it
was previously installable in.  Nothing has changed there.

The surprise here is that so many users can't find the installation
language, to me.  Users who read and write English just fine, even.
We have users come to the IRC channel and swear there's no option to
install in Spanish or Russian (the two languages which seem to have
been hit hardest here), even when told there is.  They'll re-run the
installer and still say they couldn't find it.  As I've said multiple
times, I haven't seen this installer, so I have no idea why it's so
hard.

> We want Pidgin to be ease to use by end users, right? Making it
> difficult for end-users to select their preferred language which
> currently is only possible through the installation (again, see
> #12371) is not going to make this happen.

I tend to think the installer should default to installing Pidgin in
the system language, even if the installer itself is not translated,
as I said before.  I don't know how hard this is to achieve.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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