[ sorry if this is posted twice - my fault ]
Hello,
I think it is time to do some research on how we should handle the translations. There were some messages about this in the past, but we should also look at other projects and how they handled it. I suggest you reply to this message with information about other translation efforts, so we can learn from them.
I'll start with a description of the PHP Manual, since I spend some of my time there.
The whole documentation [ http://php.net/manual ] is a DocBook document, split over many files. Every function is kept in a single file, and all those files are then merged in the build process. Many entities exist, especially for URL's.
A summary of the directory tree, sorted for clarity:
RFC/ -> internal discussion howto/ -> documentation for newcomers scripts/ -> scripts giving info about the manual images/ -> all images dtds/ -> the docbook XML 4.1.2 dtd, with some extensions entities/ -> all used entities dsssl/ -> DSSSL files, for converting the DocBook source xsl/ -> XSL files, for converting to some newer formats chm/ -> information to make CHM (Windows help) files htmlhelp/ -> same, but newer (I think) en/ -> the xml sources LICENSE -\ README --> Some info about the stuff you downloaded TODO -/ contacts.txt -> main contact for each translation Makefile[.in] -\ configure[.in] --> Need to explain these? manual.xml[.in] -> the main file, which holds everything together
The main documentation tree resides in en/. Other translations use the same directory structure (filenames!) and entities (references!), but in their own directory (nl/, fr/, ...). If a file or entity is missing, the English version is used.
When running ./configure, some scripts are run to fill up the missing entities, and create the manual.xml file. The makefile then executes (open)jade or other XML tools, depending on the requested output format. Because the transformation can take a long time (30-150 mins per format, about 6 formats, about 30 languages), the real site isn't updated that often. They want to change from the 'real' DocBook conversion to a homemade 'LiveDocs' project, that would convert the pages on-the-fly.
All translations have their own mailinglist (phpdoc-nl@xxxxxxx, for example). CVS commits go to these mailinglists (the commits to the main en/ tree go to phpdoc@xxxxxxx). Bugs that are filed in the Documentation category also end up here. Normal discussions also take place in these mailinglists.
All translators have CVS access to their directory tree, and to the main tree. This way, they can clean up errors in the main text as they find them while translating.
The CVS tree can be viewed at [ http://cvs.php.net ].
Greetings,
Jan Fabry
