Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 03:02:15 -0700 (PDT) From: asami@freebsd.org (Satoshi Asami) To: jfieber@indiana.edu Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: language-specific manuals Message-ID: <199609141002.DAA06402@silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.95.960912204530.1328G-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> (message from John Fieber on Thu, 12 Sep 1996 21:34:19 -0500 (EST))
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* > What do you think is the right place to put localized man pages?
*
* You must be reading my mind! I was just thinking about this.
Yeah, I got that tingle behind my ears saying "John is thinking about
this, John is thinking about this" so I decided to prod you! Yay!
* > /usr/share/man/man?/${LANG}
* > /usr/share/man/${LANG}/man?
* > /usr/share/${LANG}/man/man?
* > /usr/${LANG}/share/man/man?
* In the latest version of man(1) that Wolfram mentioned, the second
* is implemented. It seems reasonable to me.
Ok. So, when are we going to pull in that wonderful upgrade? :)
* What I'm not so sure on is how they should be laid out in the source
* tree. For the message catalogs, I looked at how ee was laid out:
Aahh. You're right, I totally forgot that man pages are scattered all
over the place (unlike the handbook)....
* ee/
* man/
* de_DE.ISO_8859-1/
* ee.1
* en_US.ISO_8859-1/
* ee.1
* fr_FR.ISO_8859-1/
* ee.1
*
* Also note that this puts the english man page on a level with the
* other languages. Some might appreciate this turn of events. Of
I'm not so sure about that. For one thing, citizens of Canada/UK may
be greatly offended with the implication that they somehow have to
piggyback on a certain country.... :>
* course, if they were actually installed that way, man(1) would have
* to know which language to fall back on if no page was found in the
* directory indicated by $LANG.
Yes, that too.
* If the layout is standardized enough, then populating the nls and man
* directories with Makefiles could probably be avoided.
Absolutely.
* Or, we could cut out the man an nls directory layer entirely and
* merge the two, but then you have files in a single directory being
* installed in different places in the system (assuming both catalogs
* and man pages).
Many programs don't have message catalogs anyway, so I don't think we
should worry too much about merging the two. I'd just put nls man
pages in man/${LANG}, and leave the English version upstairs (where it
is now, or in man/).
* Finally, how about selective building and installing? Japanese man
* pages, for example, wouldn't be very helpful to me. I can imagine
* the binary distribution having optional "language packs" including
* any localized man pages and message catalogs. But then how about
* installing a hybrid including localized man pages, and a subset
* of english man pages to fill in where the localized ones are not
* present... (Having a panic attack yet Jordan?)
To make Jordan's life easier later, I suggest we use a new variable
for building options (build all, build only one specified in ${LANG},
build English only, loop through building one language at a time...).
* With the handbook, the problem arises of having multiple translations
* of some files, but not others, yet *a* version of each is needed to
* build the whole handbook, regardless of language. Consequently, some
* files may be shared between different versions.
For the handbook, I'd say keep it inside each directory. This is a
"book", and has to be updated coherently as such. I don't think
sharing anything (other than Makefiles) between languages is a good
idea, even things like lists.sgml need to be translated.
* Actually, this isn't
* a difficult problem to solve, but should the english version be
* installed in /usr/share/doc/handbook, or
* /usr/share/doc/handbook/en_US.ISO_8859-1?
(I think bsd.sgml.mk requires the last path component of the source to
be "handbook", but I digress. :) I prefer /usr/share/doc/${LANG}/handbook.
If we are going to default to English when ${LANG} is not set, then
the English version should stay where it is now (just take out ${LANG}
from the above pathname and see where it points to :).
* There are a lot of logistical details once you start thinking about
* it.
Yep....
Satoshi
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