[Launchpad-users] Minor changes to handling of upstream translations

[Danilo Åegan <danilo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Launchpad Translations team has been busy for a while implementing the
next big feature that we hope to roll out in January: automatic sharing
of translations between upstream projects in Launchpad and Ubuntu source
packages.

This will mean that your upstream translations will flow into Ubuntu
faster, and also that it will be much easier to integrate translations
from Ubuntu into your upstream projects (you'll still have a choice).

In order for us to be able to do this, we will be doing some data
"sanitization" for upstream projects' translations.  We are taking a lot
of steps to ensure no problems happen for anyone.

What changes?
-------------

All translations marked as "current" (or active) in all upstream
projects will, in addition, be marked as "imported" (or "packaged" in
the UI).  We found that this distinction has always been confusing and
not really relevant or appropriate.

Practically, the only thing that changes is that "purple" bars will be
gone from upstream projects' translation overview pages.  Also, "changed
in Launchpad" filter will become mostly useless for upstream projects
until the roll-out of the next Launchpad release in January.

What will happen?
-----------------

As a migration process, we'll first do one bulk update of all the
projects to make them use the appropriate flags on their translations.
This will happen today, and will take a few hours (up to a day,
according to our estimates).  It should cause no ill-effects on your
ability to use Launchpad Translations, and the only way you can see it
happening is in statistics going out of date for 'changed in Launchpad'
counts for upstream projects hosting their translations in Launchpad.

After the data migration step, a statistics run will be executed which
will take up to another day.

Over the following weeks, leading into the release of the automatic
sharing of translations with Ubuntu, you might notice a skew in
statistics growing slowly from time to time, but we'll periodically
re-do the above step to bring it all in line.  Only when new code gets
rolled out will this not be necessary anymore.

Your say?
---------

We are looking forward to hearing from you.  Is perhaps a 'changed in
Launchpad' feature critical for you?  Do you think this is a great thing
or are you worried about something?  :)

Cheers,
Danilo
Launchpad Translations team