<sect1 id="prospective">
<title>
Prospective languages
</title>

<para>
During some periods in the development of &d-i;, the development team
may decide to "freeze" the number of supported languages.  All
languages which start after the freeze date are called
<emphasis>prospective languages</emphasis>. These languages won't go
in the prepared release but rather in the next release of the
installer.
</para>

<para>
Another reason for keeping a language out of the installer is a too
incomplete translation.
</para>

<para>
Prospective languages are kept in the file
<filename>packages/po/PROSPECTIVE</filename> along with the master po
files. Translators can continue translating, but the translations will
be kept back and not spread into packages by the synchronisation
script (see <xref linkend="synchronisation-scripts"/>).
</para>

<para>
The status of prospective languages can be fetched on the status pages
(<xref linkend="status-pages"/>) just like every other
language. However, the language is not ranked along with other
languages in the <filename>rank.txt</filename> file. A prospective
language is not listed there and graphs are not calculated.
</para>

</sect1>

