[ANN] New support for document translations

Tommy Reynolds Tommy.Reynolds at MegaCoder.com
Sat Sep 17 14:40:19 UTC 2005


Hello!

The Fedora Docs Steering Committee has been discussing the best way
to add support for multiple languages in the FDP material.  The
decision has been made to have the English and non-English
translations to be in peer files:

	mydoc-en.xml
	mydoc-de.xml

and so on.  Translators will provide a complete mydoc-<locale>.xml
file that we will just drop into the document directory.

I have updated the FDP document building infrastructure to accomodate
this.  Now, a simple make(1) command will build any or all forms of
the document (separate HTML files, a single HTML file, a PDF, or a
tarball) for each supported language.

The example-tutorial document has been updated for the new technique.
Please review it before making changes to your own document.

Most of the make-fu is in the "../docs-common/Makefile.common" file
where it belongs.  While you are welcome to browse it, you don't really
need to be concerned with it unless you are curious.

The per-document "Makefile" has gotten simpler.  Only 3 lines are
needed:

	LANGUAGES        = en
	DOCBASE	         = example-tutorial
	XMLEXTRAFILES-en =

should do the trick for an English file.  After adding a German
translation, the "Makefile" would look like this:

	LANGUAGES        = de en
	DOCBASE	         = example-tutorial
	XMLEXTRAFILES-de =
	XMLEXTRAFILES-en =

Note:

	All output files will be rendered using UTF-8 encoding for
	all of the locales defined in the ${LANGUAGES} macro.  So,
	if you need a more precise locale, use something like:

		LANGUAGES = en_US en_GB

	and name your files "mydoc-en_US.xml" and "mydoc-en_GB.xml".

As always, if you have trials and tribulations, or you just want to
ask, do so on this list so that everyone may benefit.

Cheers!
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