Re: Documentation of kernel messages (Summary)

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:53:54 +0800, LeoLi wrote:
On Thursday, July 12, 2007 2:13 AM Rob Landley wrote:
On Wednesday 11 July 2007 10:26:30 am Li Yang wrote:
There are quite a lot kernel developers for each of the popular
language, AFAIK. For non-popular languages, there shouldn't be
translation available in the first place.

I don't distinguish between "popular" and "non-popular" languages. If
somebody's willing to do the translation work, it's popular. If
nobody's
willing to do the work, then even a language 1/3 of the planet's
population
speaks isn't "popular" for kernel development.

I wouldn't discourage a translator into Klingon if they were willing
to keep
their translation up to date and/or it actually resulted in patches.

It was really a surprise when
I post my Chinese translation on the LKML so many Chinese speakers
have
commented on the translation and encouraged the translation work.
They
are not visible as they usually don't talk too much. :) So I set up
the
Chinese kernel development maillist(linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx),
there
will be more and more experienced kernel developer who can read and
update the Chinese documents after they read the translated
documentation and become kernel hacker.

The chinese mailing list is highly cool, and my first instinct was to
note it
on kernel.org/doc, but it would be better if the chinese website I
already
link to notes it instead. (That way I don't have to worry about how
to
spam-guard your email address. :)

The benefit of a localized maillist is that patches can be reviewed and
commented in native language for common problems (like style, API).


This also highlights the need for language maintainers to help the
patches go
upstream to the english list. (If we can avoid armchair commentators
saddling them with the task of translating the entire Documentation
directory
and keeping such a translation up to date, we might actually get one
too.
Fielding patches and questions sounds like plenty to me...)

I do think the documentation translation is very necessary even when
there is a language maintainer, especially for the policy documents as
HOWTO, codestyle , and etc. The contributors should go through these
policies and check their code for compliance before going to the
language maintainer for help, or there will be too much for the language
maintainer to translate. The language maintainer doesn't need to
translate all the documents himself, but he can help to coordinate the
translation effort and help to make it update to date.

I would like to comment from Japanese situation.
I do also think the documentation translation is necessary even if
there are language maintainer are not there. HOWTO like very
fundamental documents will great help for early stage of developers.
The contributors/early stage of developer will be able to follow
coding style and so on if the documents are easy to read.

So, maintain this kind of document in local language are necessary
even if there are no language maintainer.

I believe the language maintainer should mostly take care about the
patch.

Could you ask on said list if anyone is likely to volunteer for the
position?
(JUST translating patches and questions, as part of pushing code
upstream.)

If we do need a contact person, I can do it. However I don't think
there will be much translation work to do here. As I stated before,
most Chinese programmers are more or less capable of read/write
technical English. The difficult part is to let them know the benefit
of merging code in kernel and teach them how to do it. That's why the
policy documents in native language will be very useful.

I also think that most Japanese developers can read/write technical
English at some level.


Merging into the kernel is a great way to keep CODE up to date.
Don't
think
it's magic pixie dust for documentation. It never has been
before.

IMHO, having contribution merged into the kernel has the MAGIC to
attract people to work for recognition. When more and more people
volunteer to work on it, the documentation will be up to date
magically.

Obvious counter-arguments include the floppy driver, the floppy tape
driver,
the tty layer, and most of the existing english Documentation
directory...

I'll happily stay out of the way of people who actually want to merge
translations of documentation into the kernel. I reserve the right to
say "I
told you so" in about five years.

Ah, but It's not a language maintainer's job to update
documentation.
It's
their job to ACCEPT PATCHES. Translate patches, translate
questions
back and
forth. This has NOTHING to do with documentation unless they're
converting
documentation accompanying the patch one way; into english.

Language maintainers can integrate updates to the documentation just
like integrating any updates to the code. Working on the
documentation
is ,IMHO, a perfect task for novice kernel hacker to get familiar
with
the process.

From a language maintainer's perspective documentation patches
wouldn't be any
different than any other patches. Translate the description and
questions
going back and forth. The patch itself doesn't get translated when
it's C
and applies to scripts/kconfig/, why would it when it's UTF-8 and
applies to
Documentation/?

Of course this brings up the question "what kind of function and
variable
names do chinese people pick?" (I honestly don't know, but I note
that
attempts to use names that don't fit in 7-bit ascii would probably be
frowned
upon in a big way...)

It won't be too hard if the work is shared by a community. Like the
one
I'm trying to establish.

A list works fine as a point of contact. I note that in general,
maintainers
are individuals (who delegate like mad, of course), because otherwise
agenda
items languish with everyone thinking it's someone else's
responsibility.

Got it. I can do it as long as it doesn't consume too much time. :)


http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm

- Leo

Advertisement time:
Chinese kernel development community http://zh-kernel.org :)

Hmmm... Now I'm wondering if I should link directly to the docs pages
of the
chinese and japanese sites, or to the top level community pages?

The documents and maillist are also linked in the front page. It's
better to link the top level page.

- Leo
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