Re: GNOME Documentation Style Guide

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 03:41:50PM +0200 or thereabouts, Rebecca J. Walter wrote:
> On 06 Jul 2001 08:52:28 +0100, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 10:56:52PM -0400 or thereabouts, Trevor Curtis wrote:
> > > How will this be decided? Is this phase in addition to the peer
> > > editing phase? And, dear me, what would happen if we get into a .us vs .ca
> > > vs .uk vs (insert other english speaking languages here) argument. You
> > > know, the subtlties between the enlish language in different parts of
> > > the world? Small point, but I can see it comming up.
> > 
> > So can I. I know exactly what will happen. I shall lose. Again. I 
> > always do :(
> 
> What about .po files? I dont know how they work, but would it be an
> option?  Could we make the base language american eng (because the
> market is bigger, sorry telsa, and i think more of us use it as default)
> and then telsa et al. could make brit .po files?

I'm ahead of you. I do keep wanting to fill out the en_GB translations, 
but it occurs to me I should update the docs first so they're in a fit 
state to translate.

This reminds me of something else. I'm seeing people having trouble
with db2html, gnome-doc-tools-2.0 and the PNG DTD. Why are we still
using this? Are we at all in a position just to jump to XML and 
DocBook 4? We talked about this months ago and missed it for the 1.4
release. Can we make it for 1.4.1, or at least try it for a single
module? Kjarten was considering a test release of gnome-applets to
see whether all the fixes actually worked for everyone. Can we think
about trying to get all of that to XML and see whether it works?
If not, we need to update the handbook with the stuff about the
extra magic required to get things to work on RH 7.1, I think.

I have picked the wrong week to ask this, since I know John Fleck is
out of town for a week and he will doubtless have comments. But I
really would like to get an idea of what we're still waiting for
before we shift. For the toolchain as a whole? For the tools to 
become available for all distros on Linux and in BSD ports and so 
on? Or what? 

Oh, and I tried very hard to stay out of the other thread about
gender-neutral language. But for the record, since we appear to 
be playing majority votes here (which strikes me as pointless),
I do resent and object to "he" including "she". I like the style
guide though. :) 

Telsa