lynx-dev Lynx GNU style (was: Hello/LYNX)

[Webmaster Jim]

On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 08:42:38AM -0400, Webmaster Jim wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 01:18:54AM -0400, François Pinard wrote:
> > Webmaster Jim <address@hidden> writes:
> > First, I initialised the domain this way:
> >   <domain>lynx<mailto>address@hidden
> >    <disclaim><pretest>
> >    <url>http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/current/lynx2.8.3dev.2.tar.gz
> >    <url>ftp://lynx.isc.org/current/lynx2.8.3dev.2.tar.gz
> > presuming that I should send notifications for translated (ready) PO files
> > to <address@hidden>, without sending the actual contents of PO files,
> > just the URL in the archive.  I also presumed that the maintainer does want
> > translation disclaimers for translations.  Correct me where I'm wrong.
> I'm the unofficial maintainer, but perhaps address@hidden should be
> the target address. Or better yet, Rob Partington could create an email
> alias in the browser.org domain that forwards to me and other potential
> maintainers (lynx-po at browser.org?).

Yes, lynx-po at browser.org now exists, forwarded to me.

> > We usually publish for translators a precise URL, rather than a directory,
> > so they could just use batch tools like `wget' to get the distribution,
> > so I made this correction above.
> > 
> > The version naming scheme is new for the Translation Project.  Did I
> > send you the information found within:
> > 
> >    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/reply-maintainers.html
> > 
> > The are three schemes for version naming described in there.  If you use any
> > other scheme, I have to modify many scripts, and we have to prepare for 
> > this.
> > This distribution does not unpack in a directory predictable from the 
> > archive
> > name, the way which is usual for us.  For example, "lynx2.8.3dev.2" unpacks
> > within "lynx2-8-3".  This also breaks some other scripts.  Would you accept
> > considering following GNU standards for packaging?  That would be the 
> > easiest
> > for me, but if you do not want to, we might have to work out something.
> 
> There are historical reasons for the Lynx archive structure, mainly
> because a lot of development was done on VMS, which only allows one
> "dot" per filename. Win32 also can act wierdly with many dots in
> filenames. I think our workaround should be for me to unpack and
> repack the distribution in my scripts that to the source checkout for
> mirroring. Let me think on this.

OK, now there is a new distribution in
 http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/gnumatic/lynx-2.8.3.tar.gz
(perhaps I should be adding the dev number?)

> > To get out of all this, I extracted the POT file by hand instead of
> > automatically, and gave it the name lynx-2.8.3.pot, hoping that you will not
> > have other later POT files needing to be called that way, because a POT file
> > with given version numbers can only be uploaded once in the Translation
> > Project (once the wheel turns, we may change ideas at the very beginning).
> I'm wondering why you didn't use the Lynx-2.8.2 release, so that
> translators all start with a stable version? We update the "current"
> version a few times a month, which will make extra work when messages
> and lines change. We will be releasing new 2.8.3-dev versions, then
> later a 2.8.3-pre version, and then a 2.8.3-rel (release) version.

As above, perhaps we should use lynx-2.8.3.dev.n or something like that
 
> > The next problem is that the POT file header is quite incorrect: it
> > comes from a very old version of `xgettext'. The Translation Project
> > did not use that format for a long time, it is quite obsolete by now.
> > Please grab:
> >    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/gettext-0.10.35.tar.gz

We're working on this...

------
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Marvin the Paranoid Android says:
Seems like a waste of time to me...