press release format, for translation too

[Karsten Wade]

mOn Thu, 2006-02-02 at 22:38 -0600, Tommy Reynolds wrote:
> Uttered Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com>, spake thus:
> 
> > 1. Formatted ASCII text.  
> >    We'd have to write a custom text2po and po2text, with strict
> >    formatting rules on the TXT side.
> 
> Got an example of the formatting you like?  The custom scripts don't
> sound hard.

Take a stroll through the IRC log (link below), searching for "newline"
to see where we discussed this with Bernd.

It doesn't sound too hard, but the problem I see is human.  The format
has to be strict for the in-to/out-of .po to work.  With XML, the format
is within the XML, if the document is valid, we're clear.  With the
text, we'd have to either write a validate tool or rely upon humans to
continue to get the strict formatting correct.

Regardless, this -seemed- like too much work before FC5, since that is
what the first need is about.
 
> > 2. DocBook XML 
> >    Proven, but the stylesheets do not make a pretty press release.  If
> >    an XSL fanatic would make a nice stylesheet for us ...
> 
> Got an example of a pretty press release you like?

IMO, it should be like what are delivered to Business Wire.  Plain text,
written to follow a non-bylined journalistic style:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060131/20060131005159.html?.v=1

Actually, it's possible that arrives as an RTF file, then BW converts it
to HTML formatted.

Maybe we should work in XHTML?

> Idea: XML -> PO -> XML -> XSL -> TXT

Yes, as long as we can fill that XSL spot properly.  Plain docbook2txt
might work for that, it's pretty generic and doesn't have the DocBook-
looking page HTML page layout.

> > 3. OO.o SXW -> XML -> .po -> XML -> SXW
> >    No one has experimented with this yet, but it could work
> >    conceivably.  If it doesn't work, we could manually unpack the SXW
> >    and work on the XML directly.  I reckon that would work. 
> 
> IIRC, OO.o doesn't import DocBook XML, although I seem to remember a
> 3rd party add-on on sf.net somewhere.

I was thinking just Save As > XML.  AIUI, aalam has done this, and it
worked.  The key here is, don't mess with the XML.  Then we have the
best chance of pulling it back into the SXW file.

Upside to this is, many of the people who write press releases are
perfectly comfortable with OO.org as an $EDITOR.

> In general, we should be able to use the FDP infrastructure for this
> but I'm reserving judgement until I can see some examples of the
> desired results.

Right now to get through FC5 needs, we are looking at this:

1. FDP produces .po files
2. FTrans pulls .po files into i18n.r.c (CVS checkout or replication?)
3. FDP pulls translated .po files into cvs.fedora.r.c (CVS co or manual
commit?)

If we do this fast enough, we could get the release notes .po files into
i18n.r.c in time to get all the translations back and into the ISOs.
Wow!

In the post-FC5 future, we are looking at this:

1. cvs.fedora has /cvs/docs and /cvs/trans
2. The webapp (i18n.r.c tools) is adjusted to easily check-out/check-
in .po files directly from /cvs/docs/*
3. FDP continues to host its own translations

Then it's all automagic and we get to sit back and enjoy our $BEVERAGE.

Does that make sense?

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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Content Services                          Fedora Documentation Project
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