Call for translations (Debian 5.0 "lenny" release notes)
Hi,
sooner or later we will release Debian 5.0. When time comes.
The release notes are far from being ready, but we need to start
translations now. If you like to help:
1. Please reply to this e-mail (debian-doc list) stating your
interest. I will coordinate translations to prevent double
work.
In the past we had translations for ca, cs, da, de, en, es,
fi, fr, it, ja, ko, nl, pl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru, sk, sv, vi,
zh_CN, and zh_TW. My personal goal is to have the nine most
widely spoken languages (zh_CN, en, hi, es, ar, ru, pt/pt_BR,
fr, de) in. Of course, all translations are most welcome!
The release notes are now distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License, version 2. So will the translations.
2. Inform me, if you prefer full-text translation over
po-file method. Default is po. Currently, only pt_BR uses
full-text style.
Inform me, if you intend to use any other encoding than UTF-8
and good reason why. Currently, all translation use UTF-8.
3. If you like to start, check out the release notes:
$ svn checkout svn://svn.debian.org/svn/ddp/manuals/branches/release-notes/lenny
You need to apt-get install subversion to do so.
4. Start the translation using your favourite editor. For po,
you can use po-mode in Emacs or poedit or just vi. For
full-text translation, you might try nxml-mode in Emacs or
any other text editor, such as vi or gedit or whatever.
Use the existing translation of the Debian 4.0 ("etch")
release notes as a guide. We cannot easily re-use the
translation, because the format changed from debiandoc SGML
to DocBook XML and because it is the nature of release notes,
that they change fundamentally from one release to the next
anyway. But at least some parts did not change. Find the
Debian 4.0 release notes here:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/releasenotes
5. Check your translation by running "make validate LINGUA=XY"
with XY being your language code. If validation fails, you
messed up the DocBook XML markup and need to fix it.
For this mandatory step you need to apt-get install
docbook-xml, libxml2-utils, make, and po4a (and probably
more, I forgot).
6. For checking the complete document you can also run
"make txt LINGUA=XY architecture=ABC" (text version)
"make html LINGUA=XY architecture=ABC" (HTML version)
"make pdf LINGUA=XY architecture=ABC" (PDF version)
Replace XY with your language code and ABC with a valid
architecture (one of alpha, amd64, arm, armel, hppa, i386,
ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, or sparc).
For this (optional) step, you need to apt-get install
xsltproc, docbook-xsl, w3m, dblatex, and xmlroff (and probably
more, I forgot).
7. If you have write permission to the subversion repository,
just checkin your translation. I trust you. But, please,
before checkin, run "make tidypo". This helps to normalise
the po files and keep diffs sane.
If you do not have write permission, either file a bug
against the pseudo-package "release-notes" and attach your
translation as patch or send it me via e-mail. Whatever you
prefer.
8. The release notes will change a lot until release. Sometimes
it will be frustrating, if you just translated a paragraph
and the next day somebody changes or removes the paragraph
and your effort becomes void. Sorry in advance! Unfortunately,
this is inevitable. Run "svn update" at least once a day, this
will minimise surprises.
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 will be the best release Debian ever made.
Maybe it will not feature the best release notes we ever had,
but let us have at least the largest number of translations!
Many thanks in advance!
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