[RFC] Existing translations and .PO files

[Tommy Reynolds]

Hello, Translators!

(I've CC:'ed the F-D-L as well.)

I'm reworking the I18N support in the Fedora Documentation Project
tools, such as the CVS.

Previously, each document has had a set of base DocBook XML files.
As translations were produced, complete new sets of translated XML
files were added to the CVS repository.

Now, we are moving to the more familiar process of archiving only the
original document XML files and the .POT/.PO files needed to produce
the translated XML files using the "xml2po" and "po2xml" tools.

The new make(1) infrastructure will be able to use the .PO files to
create the translated XML files on-the-fly.  For example, the files
"en/example-tutorial.xml" and "po/de.po" will be archived but the
derived "de/example-tutorial.xml" file will NOT be archived but will
be considered as a temporary file.

My question is this:

Some FDP documents already have translated versions in CVS.  Under
the new process, these archived versions will be discarded in favor
of the on-the-fly translation using .PO files.

Q1) Have you translators kept your .PO files that were used for these
    translations?

Q2) If .PO files are not available, is there a way to derive the .PO
    files from the translated files or must this be a manual process?

If you have another suggestion to dealing with this, don't be shy; I
may not be asking the right questions.

Cheers