Date: Sat, 02 Dec 1995 13:04:32 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: A German version of Walnut Creek's FreeBSD 2.1 CD Message-ID: <4023.817938272@time.cdrom.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Well, for a variety of reasons, we've decided to do versions of the CD specific to various local markets. My first goal is a German version, with german liner notes and german docs (where practical) and no "DOOM" in the commerce distribution! :-) [those who understand Germany's violence-in-games ban will understand why our doom-containing FreeBSD has encountered considerable resistance in German distributor channels]. The only issue is, we have to first decide on how we're going to do it! The help files the 2.1 installer uses live in the /usr/src/release/sysinstall/help directory (if you installed from 2.1 media, you'll also see them in your /stand/help directory). They're easy to translate, and certainly represent the path of least resistance for any translator. The only problem with this is that they're also sort of throw-away docs, just as FreeBSD 2.0.5's docs were. Everything in our documentation system is moving *away* from putting things in custom docfiles and we're trying to preserve our investment across releases instead by putting things in the Handbook. John (our docmaster) also put in some "conditional compilation" stuff so that a "BOOTHELP" subset of the handbook can be generated at any time. There are also some drawbacks to this. The Handbook's favorite output format is HTML, for which we have no stand-alone reader that I could easily integrate into sysinstall (lynx is huge and definitely doesn't match that description). So this means we'll have to generate the ASCII version and hand-edit it back into some sort of presentable format, that is without page breaks and such. All of the index information will, of course, be also lost. However, it'd also make me pretty sad if we ended up doing the 2.0.5 thing again, which was basically me getting a whole bunch of translations together and then realizing that several aspects of the approach were unworkable in the long-term and that the translation work wouldn't carry over easily into 2.1. The translators need easier access to their work, and ways of making it more generally useful than it was in 2.0.5. I think that the Handbook approach, despite the teething troubles we're almost certainly going to have with it, is the right way to go. It will let the translations be used both on the boot floppy (one version for each language this time) and on the regional WWW servers that are starting to pop up. So here's the decision: Do we want to work like bunnies to make the whole "subset of handbook on boot floppy" idea work correctly and then start working on translated versions of the handbook (with emphasis on BOOTHELP sections), or do we want to be honest with ourselves and conclude that it might simply be a whole lot more expedient to just translate the existing help files (and sysinstall's menus.c + dialogs) into German, get the german CD out on the market sometime before 1996 is over, and think about this problem as a longer-term goal? Oh yeah, one more thing. Having the translators work for free last time was most sincerely appreciated, and I was pretty floored at the response I got from people willing to do all that *work*, but I'd also like to see the principal translator(s) just a little better compensated this time. I don't think I can squeeze anything too extravagant out of WC, so don't get your hopes up too high, but reasonably meaningful gestures of appreciation can be made here! :-) We can work out the details as we go along, but start thinking about whether you'd prefer money or hardware.. :) I also see this translation work as a joint WC/FreeBSD Project venture (given that we also want the regional WWW pages) more than just a simple WC job. If it were just a WC job, I'd simply use the translators that WC already has on retainer and spare you all the work. That would also result in non-FreeBSD people doing the FreeBSD translations, however, and I think that this is a more important goal than just getting a localized version of the FreeBSD CD to market! Therefore, I'd like to try this "hybrid" approach and see how it works. Two goals, then, that we need to begin thinking about if we want to do this: 1. Re-form the translation team. I liked the model we had in 2.0.5, where there was one "lead" translator and a couple of backup translators. A momentary glitch in communications before that had 2 people working on a parallel translation for one of the languages and it was a mess trying to smash them back together. One translator and one translation style per language seems to work best, with the other translators making suggestions or small improvements. I've done a few things to make this easier. First, I've created another mailing list: translators@freebsd.org. Those interested in being part of the next translation project should send mail to majordomo@freebsd.org in the usual way and join this list, please. I've packed up the 2.1 install docs (the *ascii* versions) from sysinstall and left them in: ftp://freefall.freebsd.org/pub/incoming/2.1-install-help.tar.gz These are only for reference purposes if you don't have them already on your system somewhere. They shouldn't be something we'll need unless we decide to go the 'quick and dirty' route. 2. Think about what needs to happen in the handbook for translation to really become as a viable option there. Thanks! Jordan
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4023.817938272>