[ thread was originally on debian-www ] > From: Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com> > Subject: Re: Link to Japanese Debian? > Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 13:03:12 -0700 > > > > > I couldn't find a link on our website to the Japanese Debian project: > > > > > > > > http://www.debian.linux.or.jp/ > > > > > > > > Or did I just miss it? > > > > Tim Sailer wrote: > > > www.jp.debin.org > > > > No. That's just a mirror site of the main Debian pages. The > > site I listed is the project for the Japanese-specific packages. > > There is no link to http://www.debian.linux.or.jp/ > from http://www.debian.org/. > # www.debian.linux.or.jp will move to www.debian.or.jp in the near future. > > > I was quite impressed by what they've done. > Thanks ;-) > > Incidentally, we have something to ask. > We've developed over 100 packages (Japanesized versions), so > we'd like to contribute these to the official Debian distribution. > (Unfortunately, almost all of these packages is now developed > for bo, not for hamm. we are going to hamm.) > We don't know what is the best way to do it. > Is it possible to upload these packages by proxy, > or should developers upload directly to master? > Which mailing-list is the best to ask these question? I'll cc: this to debian-devel, since most of the developers are there - and it's a public list. I'm not sure what the official Debian policy on Internationalization is - other than the fact that there are several efforts underway. Some questions I have: - are we going to have one main distribution, with supplemental distributions for each language? Or is it desirable to put everything into one gigantic multi-lingual distribution. - how do we deal with users (and developers) who do not speak English? I noticed that Debian-JP already has a separate bug system. This impacts the work Klee Dienes is doing on maintainer verification and dpkg enhancements too. - I noticed that the Debian-JP distribution has i18n'd versions of dpkg and other utilities. How can we minimize the work involved in keeping the translations and the software up-to-date and in-sync? I noticed that the "main" version of the dpkg package has translations for English and French in it -- but the Japanese i18n stuff isn't there. - It would be cool to list the Debian-JP developers on our web page - in a separate section. My feeling is that the current structure of the "main" Debian project is very English-oriented -- so it probably isn't suitable to have one gigantic project that handles all the various languages out there. If we did that, then everybody would need to know English. This would hamper efforts to create internationalized and regionalized distributions based on Debian. I like what the Debian-JP project has done. Having a separate "satellite" distribution where the working language is not English seems like a very important step in the right direction. The big problem I can see is the lack of communication between the various projects. I hardly even knew the Debian-JP project existed until I stumbled across their web page. I'd like to see the "main" Debian project provide some more support for such "satellite" distributions. But I'd like to see it done in such a way that it was decentralized. For example, a developer for the Debian-JP project would not need an account on master.debian.org -- but would still be recognized as a "Debian" developer. Having bug reports from non-English users being fed back to the proper persons responsible seems important too. I'd hate to see free software becoming incompatible and diverging because of a lack of communication due to the language barrier. Come to think of it, the "Vitamin-D" distribution could also qualify as a "satellite distribution" since they will be building a distribution using the Debian technology. [I apologize if this has all been worked out on the debian-i18n list - but I don't subscribe to that since I only understand English and a little bit of cereal-box French ] Kampai! - Jim
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