> 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.
And that's where I'm leaning, too. There were apparently some legal issues as
to why Sun had to conduct business in US English, but I'd be very surprised to
hear that they would still affect OpenSolaris. As I mention, it was something I
didn't delve into deeper in an earlier thread. We should be able to brush aside
dependence on any specific language.
> It seems to me that documentation should be
> encouraged to be multi-lingual.
No arguments here.
> 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.
The priority would be, as mentioned by others, rating the original document
first, and then if the document is deemed valuable enough, finding a translator
or ten to take it on. Ideally, any document that is deemed very valuable by the
communitee should be translated into as many languages as possible.
Realistically, that may not be attainable.
> 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
> m manager to develop plans for the localized versions
> of these docs as well. There are no plans in place
> yet.
That will be interesting to follow.
> 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
> y having a multitude of inconsistent processes.
> Again, our role in the doc community is not to
> o impose. Rather we will
> continue to participate in other community
> discussions and collaborate.
Cool, thanks.
I agree, we don't want to impose our will ("these are not the droids you are
looking for"), but suggest, for the benefit of the community and all users.
Value of the text comes first. Then comes some consistency, readability
suggestions, etc. This is why I've been advocating the allowing of second
parties' ability to take submissions and "clean them up", so to speak (with the
original author's permission). As I've said before, I can see my role as being
a "cleaner" of documentation as much as a producer. That is, one of making sure
valuable documentation doesn't get brushed aside due to the author's inability
(or lack of time) to massage it into a clear, consistent document. An editor
and proof reader, if you will.
Thanks. :-)
Rainer
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