PO export with Last-Translator " <Unknown>" email address

[Adi Roiban]

I think that if a LP user choose not to publish it's email address, an .po file export having this account as last translator will generate and " <Unknown>" email address for the Last-Translator header.

I have attached and exported .po file for German Ubuntu Start Page translation.

The problem with this export is that if I upload this .po file I get the credit for the translation.

Maybe Rosetta should export the .po file using a generic email address containing the internal userid / openid, and when this po is uploaded again in rosetta, recognize the email as a special one and give the correct credits :)

Ex. <email address hidden>

Cheers,

See also
========

bug 967936 - our use of email addresses leads to disclosure (which we probably don't explicitly warn users about)

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

I think this is hard to decide on. I don't think either way is "correct", and is mostly a matter of preference. We do not, in general, offer those PO files for download, and maybe we should just put a LP user name in there (i.e. something like https://launchpad.net/~user), but that would break every software handling Last-Translator field.

Of course, dealing with imports is going to be a nice excercise, and this would require a lot of effort, for somewhat dubious gain (i.e. I am not sure it's the right thing to do, even if someone asks for it to be done; what we are definitely doing wrong is not allowing a person to choose their email address that should be in such PO files, but that would be as hard, if not harder to implement).

[Данило Шеган (danilo)]

Also affects bzr imports and exports. I.e. we've gotten reports on monajat (https://translations.edge.launchpad.net/monajat/trunk/+translations), with their bzr export and import (i.e. see how we export "Unknown" Last-Translator, then re-import it and lose the credits in rev 50 of lp:~sabily.team/monajat/translations).

The good way to fix this would be to use the Launchpad user homepage link (i.e. https://launchpad.net/~username) in the Last-Translator instead of an email and then parse that on import (including full URL so it's more specific than just "username").

To change what's exported, look at lib/lp/translations/model/pofile.py POFileToTranslationFileDataAdapter.header property (search for email = 'Unknown'). One would get the full user path using canonical_url(self._pofile.lasttranslator), and then they'd have to parse that in POHeader.getLastTranslator() in lib/lp/translations/utilities/gettext_po_parser.py. Appropriate unit tests would be needed as well, but one can read about our processes up on https://dev.launchpad.net/ or ask on #launchpad-dev on FreeNode IRC.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

Rather than ~username, which is mutable, perhaps we could use some persistent id (I think we have one for openid).