Ranier- I don't believe that English, or US English for that matter, is a requirement for new documentation or articles that is developed for OpenSolaris. Solaris has it's "big rules" to follow for translation of its own product docs, but I don't believe that they apply in this instance. (Those rules require translation of docs into certain languages, depending on the type of doc).
It seems to me that documentation should be encouraged to be multi-lingual. There are opportunities for community involvement in translation of English to non-English languages, and there opportunities for involvement in translating documents that originate in a non-English language to English and other languages. We need to figure out all of the processes around that, including putting some verification and testing in place to make sure that translations are accurate. Yes, when we do release Sun's documentation, man pages and books, we will release the English first. We are starting to meet with Sun's G11N program manager to develop plans for the localized versions of these docs as well. There are no plans in place yet. I think your assessment of the Style Guide is correct, though. It should apply to all docs, independent of what language the document originates in. And we should share the Style Guide and templates with the Articles community, not to impose our will, but to leverage whatever processes we put into place, to avoid duplication of efforts, to make the user/developer experience reasonably consistent, etc. We don't want to turn away or confuse potential writers by having a multitude of inconsistent processes. Again, our role in the doc community is not to impose. Rather we will continue to participate in other community discussions and collaborate. Sue Weber, Program Manager-Solaris Documentation Nevada, Express, Trusted and OpenSolaris (650) 786-5467 x85467 susan.weber at sun.com This message posted from opensolaris.org
