[Bf-docboard] git manual translations: could a tool like transifex work?

[Benjamin Bohard]

Hi,

For sure, migration to restructured text documentation have been
accomplished by some over FOSS. The one I have in mind is QGIS.

QGIS documentation maintainers use rst and git
(https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation). By the way, transifex is
part of the solution they worked on to manage translation.

About git, maintaining several versions of the documentation may be
achieved using branches. As soon as a new version of the software needs
documentation, a branch may isolate the previous version. Or so I
understand the process.

Maintaining several translations is not as straightforward, I think. git
principles may not suffice. How to track translation progress and merge
new sentences from one language to another with git command only ?

Using gettext and tracking .po files instead seems to be a good lead:
predictible chunks, extracting and merging mechanisms, various editors
available. For languages other than english, rst files would be
generated from .po files. A problem remains : how to generate .po from
rst files and rst back from .po files ?

Well, I do not know of a rst parser for gettext. transifex is told to
manage text files. I just hope there will be no need for another
account. I have no room left for another password :-)

Looking forward to further contribution.

Benjamin