Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 16:11:03 -0700 (PDT) From: asami@FreeBSD.ORG (Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami) To: nclayton@lehman.com Cc: motoyuki@snipe.rim.or.jp, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, kuriyama@sky.rim.or.jp, doc@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-translate@ngo.org.uk, jdp@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-tech-jp@jp.freebsd.org Subject: Re: Resolution: FDP reorganisation Message-ID: <199906252311.QAA04505@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu> In-Reply-To: <19990625150942.K15628@lehman.com> (message from Nik Clayton on Fri, 25 Jun 1999 15:09:42 %2B0100) References: <57461.930305624@zippy.cdrom.com> <199906251220.VAA22552@sakura.snipe.rim.or.jp> <19990625150942.K15628@lehman.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
* From: Nik Clayton <nclayton@lehman.com> * On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 09:20:54PM +0900, Motoyuki Konno wrote: * > A. Why 'ja' is better than 'ja.*' * > ---------------------------------- * * <snip> * * Thanks, that's all useful information, and it would've been handy a couple * of months ago. However. . . * * > One reason is that the cost of change is quite large. * > 'ja_JP.EUC' -> 'ja' change was *only* one year ago. Japanese doc * > team and ports team paid the cost. We agreed the change because * > it is reasonable (as I explained above). * * I'm not moving the *installed* location at all. Could people please * understand this. * * I am moving the location WITHIN THE CVS REPOSITORY. * * As other messages from me have explained, there will not be a 1:1 mapping * between locations in the CVS repository and locations in the installation * directory. One file in the CVS repository will probably end up being * installed (actually, symlinked) to various places in the installation * tree, depending on the value of various variables. * * The change is to promote consistency at all levels of the CVS tree so that * the vast majority of the code within the Makefile's can be common, instead * of needing lots of special case handling for all the different languages * and encodings. I really don't understand what the name of the repository directories have to do with this. The entire "<lang>[<_territory>][<.codeset>]" name is just one single string. Unless you are planning to write code to break it into pieces and interpret each piece separately (which nobody does currently, AFAIK), having ja sitting alongside zh_CN and en_UK.ISO_8859-1 shouldn't make any difference at all. (Have you seen /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale?) You still need to find out what the installation directories should be (maybe that is going to default to the repository directory's name), and some way to override them from individual Makefiles or the environment to suit the individual site's need. The only difference I see is what goes into individual Makefiles, not in the framework (*.mk files). * Just to make this completely clear; * * 1. After making the change I am proposing, the Japanese documentation * will *still* install into a .../doc/ja/ directory. * * No change. * * 2. At some point in the future (when it's written, debugged, and * tested), *all* the docs will install into a variant of * .../doc/<lang>_<region>.<encoding>/. Symlinks will be used to * ensure that this approach allows an admin to be 100% compatible * with the current mechanism, while affording those admins that want * it to be more flexible. * * Yes, this is a change, but I guarantee that when this change does * happen that the default will be to ensure that any symlinks necessary * for compatability will be retained. The admin will have to make * conscious changes to break compatability. Um, that's the same thing. We are objecting to the eventual goal in item 2, and 1 _as the preparation for 2_. We have already tried the symlinks approach when we moved stuff from ja_JP.EUC to ja. It was a disaster. There are so many systems out there where it would break (what if both directories already exist?). What we learned was that it is near impossible to convert an existing system seamlessly. Docs should stay where they are, where people and ports expect them to be, and symlinks added for additional names -- not the other way around. Note that the whole locale directory issue is not that of the doc project alone. There are manuals, ports, and web pages (and god knows how many third party software and scripts that have been written according to our old convention). Unless you want the doc project stuff to be inconsistent with the rest of FreeBSD, you need to realize that this problem is much bigger and deeper than you think. That said, I won't object if your eventual goal will allow a per-language *default* in directory names. For instance, if we can put "LANGSUBDIR ?= ja" in ja_JP.eucJP/Makefile to have all the Japanese documents install in the "ja" subdir by default (and have symlinks pointing to there from ja_JP.eucJP or whatever), that is fine for me. Each language/territory can choose their own default (maybe most of them will just want it to be the same as the repository name, although I have a hunch that Mandarin folks will prefer "zh" or "zh_CN" -- but don't quote me on this) that makes the most sense to them. *IF* some Japanese sysadmin really wants to install both eucJP and SJIS variants of docs on their system for whatever reason, they can override that variable and take their risk. But if you insist on installing Japanese docs by default by ja_JP.eucJP with the option by site overrides, we are strongly against it. As Konno-san said, it doesn't make sense from a Japanese user's standpoint, and it will make maintenance of other parts of the system (ports, web pages, etc.) a nightmare. * N * -- * --+==[ Systems Administrator, Year 2000 Test Lab, Lehman Brothers, Inc. ]==+-- * --+==[ 1 Broadgate, London, EC2M 7HA 0171-601-0011 x5514 ]==+-- * --+==[ Year 2000 Testing: It's about time. . . ]==+-- Satoshi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199906252311.QAA04505>