Mixing content and whitespace changes [Was: Re: cvs commit: www/en internet.sgml]

[Gábor Kövesdán]

Marc Fonvieille escribió:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 06:50:50PM +0000, Johann Kois wrote:
>   
>> jkois       2008-04-14 18:50:50 UTC
>>
>>   FreeBSD doc repository
>>
>>   Modified files:
>>     en                   internet.sgml 
>>   Log:
>>   PR: www/121562
>>
>>   Some updates to  www/en/internet.sgml.
>>
>>     
>
> Content changes mixed with whitespace changes.
> It'll cause unnecessary pain to a translator to find what has been
> really changed :(
>   
Yes, I've also needed to face with such issues recently when I was 
working on the Spanish website. It's not just the mixing, but some old 
pages are so badly indented that it is a real pain to pair the 
translated parts to their English correspondings. Although we do not 
surge fixing and forcing these rules very strictly, some level of order 
is necessary to keep these files easily readable for the translators and 
for the future editors, as well. It is a real pain to work with badly 
indented files. I propose the following procedure to avoid these 
difficulties:

1, If you are going to apply whitespace fixes or have difficulties with 
the translation, fix the whitespace in the English version of the file 
firts. Sweep the whole file and leave it completely clean and 
well-indented and commit this with a note to the translators that this 
change is just cosmetical.
2, Apply content changes to the English version and commit.
3, If you are translating, now catch up with the content and fix the 
whitespaces and indentation if it is not fixed already and commit those 
together. As each translation takes the English version as a starting 
point, you don't need to count with another translators, so you can 
apply the changes together.

Cheers,

-- 
Gabor Kovesdan

EMAIL: gabor at FreeBSD.org
WWW:   http://www.kovesdan.org