This section applies to translators who need to send their completed translations back to the package maintainers, especially for packages from levels above 2 for which no direct Subversion commit is possible (either because the translator cannot use GIT or because the package maintainer(s) do not encourage wide commit access). All interactions with Debian package maintainers should be made through the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS). Other ways of interaction such as sending files to maintainers directly, or to the &i18n-coords; is to be prohibited as it makes things impossible to track down. The &i18n-coords; will not encourage direct interaction with either them or the package maintainers. The only exception are cases where translators have direct commit access to the package repositories such as &d-i; level 1 translations. A bug report is only a special way to send traceable information which is relevant for a given package. This may be a real bug report (i.e. something not working properly or as expected) as well as an enhancement suggestion or a feature request. Debian bug reports are handled through a web and e-mail interface. Access to the bug reports can be made through the BTS web site: &url-bts;. Bug reports are sorted by severity and tags. Details about bug severities, tags and other information regarding bug reports may be found at &url-bts;. For translation bug reports, the recommended severity to use is wishlist. The recommended tags are l10n tag as well as the patch tag (because the bug report includes the needed "fix" by including the translation file). The d-i tag must be used for core D-I translations as well as base-config and tasksel. The subject of the bug report should start with "[INTL:xx]". When the package has several translatable materials, the subject should mention which translation is sent. When translators want to send more than one translation file, they should send one bug report per file to send, in order to avoid confusion. The bug report must mention which type of translation is sent (debconf, programs, etc.). Reporting a bug to a Debian package is just a matter of sending a specially formatted mail to &email-bts;. The mail should include in the mail body, at the top, a few special pseudo-fields: Package: <package name> Version: <version of the package> Severity: <bug severity> Tags: <bug tags> As a consequence, the following is a typical manual bug report (Klingon translation for the shadow package sent by the translator named John Doe): From: John Doe <john.doe@johndoe.com> To: &email-bts; Subject: [INTL:tlh] Klingon debconf templates translation Package: shadow Version: N/A Severity: wishlist Tags: l10n patch Please find attached the Klingon translation of the shadow package. (encoded tlh.po file follows) Translators are encouraged to use the Debian reportbug utility which will handle all these formatting details for them. An example command line follows. It will report a bug against the shadow package with the Klingon (code: tlh) translation: reportbug --attach=tlh.po --offline \ -s "shadow: [INTL:tlh] Klingon debconf templates translation" \ --severity=wishlist --tag=patch --tag=l10n --no-config-files \ shadow The reportbug utility must be configured for using correct originating address and real name. See man reportbug for details. An example ~/.reportbugrc is given below. Do not use it directly but adapt it to your own needs! # reportbug preferences file # Version of reportbug this preferences file was written by reportbug_version "1.99.51" # default operating mode: one of: novice, standard, advanced, expert mode standard # default user interface ui text # offline setting - comment out to be online #offline # name and e-mail setting (if non-default) realname "John Doe" email "johndoe@johndoe.com" # You can add other settings after this line. See # /etc/reportbug.conf for a full listing of options. It is also worth mentioning the reportbug-ng package which features a user-friendly bug reporting utility with full desktop integration. Translation bug reports usually need a file to be attached to the bug report. To avoid encoding problems, especially on package maintainers side, compressing the translation file with gzip is recommended.