From owner-freebsd-chat Tue May 30 4:25: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94DB837B60E for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 04:24:57 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA04421; Tue, 30 May 2000 12:23:50 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 12:23:50 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: Christian Weisgerber Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why encourage stupid people to use *BSD WAS:Re: IE forFreeBSDPetition Message-ID: <20000530122350.A2798@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> References: <20000527184152.G3471@welearn.com.au> <8gpbuh$1rba$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <20000528073517.H3471@welearn.com.au> <8gsebr$1mn8$1@bigeye.mips.inka.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <8gsebr$1mn8$1@bigeye.mips.inka.de>; from naddy@mips.inka.de on Mon, May 29, 2000 at 02:41:31AM +0200 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, May 29, 2000 at 02:41:31AM +0200, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > In fact, now that I think about it, our installation routine is > available only in English, isn't it? (I've heard that there's a > localized Japanese installer, but it isn't in the repository.) I know the French translation team have expressed an interest in a French sysinstall. Of course, step 1 in this project is localsing sysinstall in the first place. Translating message strings is (I think) somewhat simpler. > - Shouldn't the resources that are spent on translation rather be > devoted to improving documentation or code? Are translators really > a separate group that wouldn't contribute otherwise if they > weren't tied up with translations? I don't think so. Primarily, this is because we have no control over what section of the project people want to contribute to. If someone comes along and wants to contribute by doing translations then I'm not going to say "Well, thanks for volunteering, but we'd rather you didn't, and tried writing some articles instead." If someone comes along and says they can do both, and what should they concentrate on, the decision is still not so clear cut. By translating existing documentation they open it out to a wider audience, some of whom might then contribute back articles (or source code) of their own. > For quite some time now I have been holding the belief that not > everybody is served well by a unix box on their desktop. Lately, > I have become increasingly outspoken about this. The reactions are > interesting. Some people seem to be offended that I don't try to > fanatically convince them to run "Linux" (they haven't heard of > unix yet). No, makes sense. I've been holding the belief for ages that not everybody is served well by a Windows box on their desktop :-) > My latest scheme to make myself unpopular is to become outspoken > about the language issue. I'm sick and tired of the whining about > documentation only being available in English. Is that 'whining' generic, or is it specific to FreeBSD? I haven't seen any (but I don't frequent -questions). N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message