In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote: >Yes, the goal of the Debian JP Project is not to develop "Japanese >Debian add-ons", but to make i18n efforts of Debian itself from >Japanese (as well as other languages) point of view. > >It is true that we have a lot of packages (some of them are not >Japanese-specific so they are useful for non-Japanese users) not yet >contributed to Debian. IMHO, it is mostly because many Japanese >developers feel difficulty or tiresomeness in becoming a official >Debian developer (yes, it is not difficult nor tiresome, IMO), but the >official packages from the Debian JP Project is increasing one by one.
I realize that the process of getting localization changes into the main distribution can be a lot of work. I am glad you guys are trying (and succeeeding) in the arduous job of internationalizing Debian/GNU. >I know that there is an effort to make i18n'ed boot-floppies. But to >support Japanese, what we have to do is not just translating the >dialog messages, but putting kon2/konfont (which enables displaying >Japanese on console) into the base system, implementing multibyte >support of dialogs and so on. And currently there is no official >policy or mechanism for translated manpages, program messages, window >manager menus etc. Yes, and also consider that we try to upstream our patches as much as possible (or at least we should!). >Generally, current i18n is mostly "for English and Europian users". We >should promote "true i18n" by solving many problems in creating "real >i18n'ed operating system". Yes, I hope Debian is soon the first truly international free-software distribution. My believe is that we need *strong* statements in the Debian Policy to help internationalization. These would include technically optimal soluations to the problems and more that you raised above. Let me know what I can do to help this effort. -- .....A. P. [EMAIL PROTECTED]<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
