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{{Proposal_Header|This page is a proposal to improve tools used by the Audacity team.  |}}
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==The Problem==
It's more opportunity than problem.
* There is considerable work in creating Audacity.  Some of it could be helped a lot by software tools. 
* When theming comes in, we may be changing the default theme quite a lot, and that could mean a lot of work on the images.


==Background==

We have limited tools for:
* Pull manual from website, convert to local file for offline help (Python)
* Script to color reduce images to save space (DOS)
* Reformat P3's from bugzilla for use in release notes (Javascript)
* Link checker (online service)
* Extract po files from source code.

== Proposed Features ==

===Manual===
* {{done}} Search and replace in wiki.
* {{done}} Scripted Image capture in Audacity.
* {{todo}} Scripted Image post-processing (drop shadows, annotation, color reduction) using ImageMagick. The actions can easily be strung together. Automating the upload of images back to wiki once it's all done, if we want to do that, would be possible too, but harder to program.
* {{done}} Convert manual to pdf.  This may need a step using proprietary software to do it well.
** '''Gale 26Oct14:''' The major problem appears to be converting the image maps (unless we don't do that). Even Adobe Acrobat could not do it, last time it was tried.
** '''James 28Dec17:''' Problem solved.  We have image maps but not tooltips, which are not part of the standard.  Solved using LaTeX and BeautifulSoup fu.<br><br>

===QA===
* {{todo}} Automated 'regression' test (significant overlap with Scripted Image Capture).
* {{todo}} Automated long-running and glitch tests.
** {{done}} Drop-Out detection.
* {{todo}} Web based UI for automated-build-bot that builds installer too.
* {{todo}} '[[The Ideal Bugtracker|The perfect bug tracker]]'

===Forum/Lists===

===Translation===

* {{done}} Script to check matching of format specifiers like %d.  This will catch some problems that could otherwise crash Audacity.
** '''Gale 08Nov14:''' This can be manually checked now using Poedit. 

'''Gale (27Oct14) wrote:''' IMHO we should complete implementation and testing of the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Language_Extension_Bundle MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle] on [http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Main_Page Main Page]. Then translations would at least be in their own namespace and could be easily excluded from string operations. 

===Release Process===

==Developer/QA Backing==
* '''James Crook:''' 
** In favour of some combination of these.  Some have much better ROI than others.



==Use Cases==

==Details==


{{Proposal}}