Which place for docs in French, German, etc?

[Michel LAVAUD]

To:twg-tds@shsu.edu
Subject: Which place for docs in French, German, etc?

>  doc/french
> makes me nervous; at the least we'd have to move everything now there
> to
>  doc/english
> 
> but when a manual only exists in one language, how is a user expected
> to realize its in French, German, Russian? 

Well, he would look in directory doc/french, or doc/german, or
doc/russian. It's a question of collecting together matter of the
same kind. Docs in French are of the same kind. When you get
documentation (say for a TV set) in several languages, say Dutch,
English, French, German, Japanese etc., you have usually the
complete doc in Dutch collected together, then the English doc,
then the French doc, etc:

1 Dutch
  Chapter one
  Chapter two
  ...
2 English
  Chapter one
  Chapter two
  ...

Of course, one could also have a different type of organization:

1 - Chapter one
  Dutch
  English
  French
  German
  ...
2 - Chapter two
  Dutch
  English
  French
  German
  ...

but I never saw that. As for commercial software, doc is also
organized in the first way, when it is provided in several
languages. I find this is more user-friendly.

Having to look through many directories to find doc in French
would make me uncomfortable (although not nervous). I think that
most French users would appreciate that doc in French would be
gathered together in one main subdirectory /french, rather than
disseminated in the whole doc tree. It would be interesting to
have the opinion of other non-English speaking people ?


Michel Lavaud  (lavaud@univ-orleans.fr)