Re: Debian Policy 3.8.3.0 released: localized manpages
Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> writes:
> Before people "blindly" update their Standards-Version, I deeply
> suggest looking at this item:
>> * Localized man pages should either be kept up-to-date with the
>> original version or warn that they're not up-to-date, either with
>> warning text or by showing missing or changed portions in the
>> original language. [12.1]
> *many* packages do provide localized manpages where l10n is handled
> "manually" (the translated manpages are just a copy of the original
> ones....where English is manually replaced by the said language). With
> such setup, it is nearly impossible to guarantee that the localized
> manpage is in sync with the original one.
The intention in those cases is for the maintainer to add a warning to the
page saying that it may not be up-to-date (preferrably after doing some
analysis based on when they know the English manpage last changed).
> (thankfully for our release date, this "should" is not a "must"...:-))
Yes, very intentional. :)
The rationale in the Policy discussion about this is that out-of-date man
page translations without any warning is *already* a bug, so putting it in
Policy saying that it's a bug doesn't make any packages more buggy than
they already are.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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