Documentation String Freeze Exception Procedure

[Matthew East]

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Hi,

I've noticed recently that some commits which constitute string changes
are going on in the edgy branch, in particular on the Kubuntu side. At
the moment, this violates our policy of not breaking the documentation
string freeze [1], which requires that we not change strings after that
date, subject to certain exceptions.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationStringFreeze

We need to (re)consider two aspects of our procedure here, I think. I'm
cc:ing Matt because he can give us some useful advice.

One: What procedure do we follow when making an exception to that
freeze? It's not documented on the above page. I think the answer should
be broadly: "a new translation template should be generated including
the changes made, and the translators should be warned (via the mailing
list) with enough time to get the change translated".

Two: What do we do AFTER the release? Currently, our policy as I
understand it is to do nothing. Bugs get fixed in the next version of
Ubuntu only. However, since we are talking about strings here, there is
often no real risk of the change actually breaking anything, so we may
wish to consider introducing a policy of fixing minor and non-risky bugs
in existing versions as well as in the next version of Ubuntu. If we do,
we will need a procedure which absolutely protects translations.

Changing a string in the English version doesn't actually compromise
translations at all, because as long as the translation template is not
updated, the translation is likely to be unaffected. However, it would
be nice to ensure that the translations take the benefit of a bug fix,
if we decide we are going to do them.

So, I'd propose that where there is a bug fix, the procedure should be
to fix the English version, check thoroughly that the validity of the
docbook has not been effected, notify the translators, and ensure that a
reasonable time passes before translations are imported from Rosetta,
and the updated package is uploaded. The bug should remain open until
that time.

What do people think? It may be that the view is that we shouldn't
change any strings after release at all, if so, then so be it.

Matt
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