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To: jfieber@freebsd.org
cc: doc@freebsd.org
Subject: Time to pick up the gauntlent with multi-lingualism again?
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 10:49:08 -0800
Message-ID: <3709.817066148@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-doc@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

I know I dropped the ball on this last, so I'm picking it up again and
dusting it off a little.

Basically, we're seeing a couple of things come slowly into convergence:

o A desire on WC's part to have multi-lingual versions of the FreeBSD CDs.
  That is, versions with all the basic docs, installation menus, cover text
  and other "presentation material" in the native language.

o The growing formation of the regional name servers which is leading us
  to www.fr.freebsd.org, www.br.freebsd.org, and so on.  The regional web
  sites will want to make versions of their pages available in the native
  language as well as english, I expect.

The big mistake I made with 2.0.5 was not in consolidating this
better, and it sounded like the -lang argument to sgmlfmt (or whatever
it was you'd come up with) was a step in the right direction.

Maybe we could attack this in two stages:

1. Put the framework in place for additional versions of the handbook,
   keyed by language.  Let translation-oriented people start sniffing
   around in the handbook and see what parts might be most valuable to
   translate.

2. Do the whole -floppydoc thing that didn't get done for 2.1 - that is,
   nuke the docs out of sysinstall/help and generate the floppy's doc
   on the fly from a subset of the handbook.

Now that 2.1 is finished, I've got more time to contemplate document
reform for 2.1.1.

						Jordan