Brendan Eich wrote:
Clover wrote:
Question: do DevMO/l10n have to be exact translations (e.g. can l10n pages have different index pages, like on MS site)?
I'm not sure what's best. Can you say more about why the MSDN localizations have different index pages and possibly other structure?
If you go to microsoft site or MSDN, and then to the Taiwan version, you won't find any file-to-file relationship. The Taiwan pages have very different layout. The English version and Taiwan version have similar file structure, but they have diffierent articles. For example, on MSDN Taiwan you can see articles written by Taiwanese (which aren't translated to English).
I would suggest the following editing rules:
way too many.
- Every article must be reviewed for grammar, spelling, readability etc. - All articles have to be complete
They will most likely never be.
- Every article must have a publish date
- Every article should indicate what version of software it is applicabel to
That doesn't get us around documenting other versions, though.
- We accept non-trivial content updates - updated page must have a Update Date
This stuff should be part of the CMS. Don't try to put up rules for stuff that software should handle fine.
- details need to be reviewed for version applicability - Links can be added, removed, updated without changing the document date. - We will NOT accept grammar and spelling changes
Why (for the last two)? Grammar and spelling fixes may be annoying, but what good does it do to have bad english?
Note that significant parts of these documents will be written by people with a non-english mother language. Keep it real.
In general, we would ensure that all docs have print, professional quality. This would have the following advantage:
- Translators can translate a page and be done with it. S/he doesn't have to watch the doc
Translators shouldn't have to watch a doc, they should get notified. But again, don't put up rules that software should take care of.
Oh, and don't put up rules for vapourware. AFAICT, we're not excluding translated versions of the documents so far, but we're not planning on having them soon.
- We don't have to review and update every page whenever we roll out a new software version. The Date and Version fields would imply if a doc is still relevant.
Versioning of docs is a tough question and should probably be decided by drivers. I see three or four targets:
- trunk
- latest stable
- 1.4 (which is latest API/embedding-stable)
- 1.0 (did we deprecate this one? It'd be hell to document that. But 1.4 won't be that much easier.)
- We encourage people to write more
- We stop wasting time on old docs. If they are obsolete, and updating the doc takes no trivial effort, we can just give up on the doc.
This should be decided on a case by case basis by the iron fist. No rules for stuff like this.
- People sometimes file bug reports that a doc refers to a software that has a new version and the version/link needs to be updated. This is silly; we shouldn't try make sure everything is up-to-date to minute details.
- Most doc writers don't have time to maintain their own docs. This relieve them from such obligation
- All doc writers can go on a summar vacation and the site will still run smoothly.
Axel _______________________________________________ mozilla-documentation mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-documentation
