GlotPress plugin to enable GTE-only (read-only) variant to run on translate.wordpress.org

[alvarogois]

Due to the fact that we have two variants in Portuguese (Portugal, pt_PT), a new orthographic reform variant (AO90), which is not on translate.wordpress.org, and the default pre-reform variant (pre-AO90), and that we have offline tools to convert pre-AO90 to AO90, we thought of a way to still have only one publicly editable branch, the default variant, and the new one, that should only be edited by GTE/PTE, that would import the converted versions.

This would make possible to maintain only one branch, and manually update the AO90 variant.

AO90 is only mandatory for official institutions, and is not ratified by all other Portuguese speaking countries. Set aside the controversy ​https://jpn.up.pt/2016/05/05/novo-acordo-ortografico-manifestamente-inconstitucional/ ​http://ionline.sapo.pt/510067, the Portuguese WordPress Community publicly voted ​http://wp-portugal.com/2013/05/29/wordpress-em-portugues-sem-acordo-ortografico/ to maintain the pre-AO90 as the default language pack for WordPress pt_PT, so that no one is forced to use the AO90 version without opting-in. But as soon as variants became a part of core, we've been struggling with the need to have a way to serve both variants, without duplicating the translation flows.

We've suggested other ways to include variants in the GlotPress workflow ​https://glotpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/432#comment:3, that would be useful for other locales also. We've created a plugin ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/pt-variants/ to enable the AO90 variant in core (before variants were in core).

The optimal solution would be to have some kind of automated process, that could tap into the already available tools we use offline to make the conversion automatically. We don't have access to the set of rules that makes the new orthography from the old one, therefore, we have to rely on this offline tools and make it by hand.

Having a read-only variant would make this possible. We'd maintain the default variant and import the converted language files to this second variant, that would be read-only or edited only by GTE/PTE.

[obenland]

@ocean90 Has there been any progress on managing variants since this ticket was opened?

[ocean90]

AO90 is now available on translate.wordpress.org. Once there's a plugin for making a translation set read-only we can use that on translate.wordpress.org. Until then, I'm marking this as maybelater.