Re: [PATCH]Documentation: Chinese translation of Documentation/arm/kernel_user_helpers.txt

Dave Martin
2012-11-01T14:19:45Z

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 05:34:15PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 12:06:19PM +0100, Dave Martin wrote:
> >
> > What's the best way of making sure that changes in the source document
> > propagate to translated versions?
> >
> > It might be enough to put a note in the source document to remind people
> > to check for the extistence of translated versions and CC the relevant
> > translation maintianers with any patches affecting the source document.
>
> What I was suggesting was even more light-weight. Just include at the
> very beginning or the very end of the the file the last time the
> translation was updated, and either the kernel version (i..e, v3.6) or
> the git commit ID (i.e., df981d03eeff) that was used for the source
> document.
>
> That way, someone who reads the file will know how "fresh" the
> document is, and the reader can do a "git log -p
> Documentation/arm/kernel_user_helpers 1234567890abcd.." to see all of
> the changes made to the file since the last time the translation was
> updated.
>
> People will inevitably remember to forget to notify the translation
> maintainers, and as the number of translations go up, the more
> workload we put on the everyone else. If we simply mark the
> translation, then the translators can poll to refresh the document at
> their leisure, or perhaps this allows anyone who is using the
> translated documentation file and who has a reasonable command of
> English to do the "git log -p ..." command and perhaps contribute a
> patch to update the translation. So I think this approach would scale
> much better.

The only potential issue I see here is that the final commit ID may not
be known at least until the patch is applied in a maintainer tree. But
I guess this is not a different problem from existing practices where a
patch references commit IDs.

It sounds like a reasonable, practical approach to me.

Cheers
---Dave