Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP #10 -- Proposal for restructuring the CVS regarding documentation wrt internationalization proposal

[Kurt Lieber]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 01:43:05PM +0200 or thereabouts, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> > Another proposal, which has been discussed for a while is that community
> > pages (or rather 1 page) should actually be maintained by Gentoo itself.
> > Other words, $LANG.gentoo.org rather than being a simple translation of
> > existing of main website will be a localised page (please note the diff.
> > between translation and localisation). Though this page will have to comply
> > with some standarts, authors will be more or less free to add the
> > information, which they feel is important for their community.
>
> The translation team can edit its own index.xml file how it sees fit. Both
> implementations are possible.

This is one area that I disagree with.  I feel we need to have consistency
across the web site, including translated versions.  Using French as an
example language, you may have folks that prefer to check the site in
english (because it's easier to type 'www.gentoo.org') and may not ever
check the www.gentoo.org/fr/index.xml page.  If you have inconsistent
versions of news across the pages, our users will suffer.  Now they'll have
to check both pages in order to get a full picture of what's going on in
the Gentoo world.

FRLinux said in his bug report that "Gentoo Officials were denying a
possibility to have a full Gentoo Community."  I'm not sure who he was
referring to, but it wasn't me.  I'm quite open to the idea of allowing
country-specific official gentoo web pages.  There were only three
stipulations:

1) anything that falls under a *.gentoo.org name needs to maintain the
   consistent look and feel of the main gentoo.org site.

2) they need to publish their docs using guide-xsl.  This is more of a
   technical requirement since our entire web site is built around AxKit
   and XML.  It also ensures that, if we update the look/feel of the web
   site in the future, all pages in the *.gentoo.org domain will be updated
   instantly.

3) they need to reside on a gentoo.org infrastructure server.  Again, if it
   ends in gentoo.org, we need to have control over the security of the
   server and also have the ability to yank inappropriate content in an
   emergency.  I won't risk having a rogue user get pissed off and posting
   "gentoo is a bunch of communist pinkos" on their country page.

That's it.  I'm still open to creating those pages on a *country* specific
basis, but not a language specific one.  (otherwise, how do we handle
countries like England, Canada and the US which all speak English)

Reading over FRLinux's bug report, along with Sven's GLEP, it sounds to me
like we're trying to solve two different problems:

1) internationalizing the web site, ensuring that all gentoo pages are
   offered in multiple languages
2) give user communities in other countries the ability to have their own
   localized pages.

Both are achievable and I'm willing to help support both,
infrastructure-wise.  However, I think the solutions should be kept
separate.

--kurt