Re: Make GNUN more user-friendly

[Ineiev]

Hello, Thérèse;

> when it comes to using it locally -- to generate and validate HTML, for
> instance -- it becomes a real burden. To me, it is like using a sledge
> hammer to swat a fly.

Running GNUN locally has been supposed to be like using a sledge hammer
to swat a fly from the beginning (this is to explain the situation
rather than to justify the fact).

> One of the problems is the huge number of useless files in the local www
> directory -- useless for a translator, that is. Selective checkout may
> be part of the answer

Yes. I think it would be useful to finalize it in a script or a page
of documentation.

> Another problem is the awfully complicated page generation system. When
> a translated page is regenerated locally, the POT is often regenerated
> as well,

This sounds like a bug. do you know how to reproduce it?

> and this interferes with update later on. My workaround was to
> modify POs in www-fr, copy them to www to generate and validate the
> translated page (saved to www-fr), then restore www to its original
> state.

On the other hand, GNUN regenerates the translations, anyway,
and those files will need reverting to their original state in www.

I wonder whether something like VPATH builds can be used to avoid
that (of course, gnun-validate-html would need a modification).

> It worked for quite some time, but I really got fed up when one of the
> includes had a validation error.

Ideally, validation errors should be fixed in www; if you and Denis
don't mind, you could become the second French co-ordinator and get
a write access to www repository.

> Then I tried to bypass includes, translists, and the like.
> The resulting script is attached.

Thank you!

It looks like there are some trade-offs that may want reconsidering;
apart from what I've already mentioned, I'm not absolutely fond of its
interactivity --- as for me, it reduces the flexibility, e.g.

find "$www_fr" -name \*.fr.po ! -path \*/jokes/\* \
| while read po; do \
  $transvalidate "$www" "$po" || { echo $po seems broken; break; }; \
done

> I am just a newbie at that sort of things.  ;)

I must note that it's unbelievably impressive for a newbie.