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?

> >One question about doc/package scheme: where would you put doc of
> >dvips in English, French, and German? In:
> 
> I think this should be up to the package writer. Personally I'd use
> something like:
> 
>    doc/dvips/dvips.tex  (master)
>    doc/dvips/dvips-fr.tex (french translation)
>    doc/dvips/dvips-de.tex (german translation)
> 
> etc. possibly with a symbolic link dvips-en.tex -> dvips.tex.

Ah! So, Adobe and other commercial editors would be generously provided
with complete subtrees in TDS, while frog-eaters and beer-drinkers ought to
be content with a few patches :-) No, seriously: your proposal would raise
more problems than it would solve. What about TexShell and other packages
with 6 to 8 letters, how would you truncate them? How could you manage
automatically with scripts, a mass of hand-made patches? And, if this is
acceptable for languages, why TDS at all: just put back all the tfm files
in one directory as it was before, all metafont files in another, etc.

I think that the problems are quite clear now, after this
discussion. It is better, for the time being, I forget about TDS
proposals for doc, go on translating important docs into French
with other members of AsTeX association, and try to organize
these the way we think could be best for French users. Then, back
again to TDS to see if/how work done can fit into it (or its
future state, I am confident it will be improved).
And thanks to everybody for remarks, it was a pleasure to
discuss.

Michel Lavaud  (lavaud@univ-orleans.fr)