Which place for docs in French, German, etc?

[Michel LAVAUD]

To: TWG-TDS@SHSU.edu
Subject: Re: Which place for docs in French, German, etc?
 
David CARLISLE wrote:
> The primary documentation for picins happens to be in german. If I
> were looking for the documentation for the package under the 
> doc/<package> scheme then I find the documentation, and well I can't
> read German, but that is my fault, and I could probably get enough out
> of the examples to get by. However under the doc/<language> system
> that you suggest, then either I have to search all the directories (as
> I may not know which language the documentation is written in) or if I
> use your `filtering' example, then I dont see the documentation at
> all.

Ah yes, thanks, I can understand you better now. I remember
bm2font only had doc in German, in its first versions; there is
also a translator from Winword to LaTeX whose doc is only in
French, too. However:

- I am not convinced it is a good idea to encourage users to use
a package if they have no documentation? I fear it could spread
the idea that TeX is "amateur" software.

- When such packages are really very interesting, somebody (if
not the author) will soon provide a doc in English (cf. the
example of bm2font, whose complete doc is now available in
English). The status of "excellent package with no doc in
English" is just a transient state, and their number stays
permanently close to zero. IMHO, better let users wait for next
version of the package, with a doc they can understand.

If it seems really mandatory: maybe add a file doc/en/no_en.doc
where these few packages with no English doc are listed, with a
short description of what they do, for those who would like to
test ?

Michel Lavaud  (lavaud@univ-orleans.fr)