> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:49:12 +0100 > From: Patrice Dumas <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected], [email protected], > [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], > [email protected] > > > The translator doesn't always know whether a translated manual exists > > when the translation is being written. And even if a translated > > manual does exist, there's no reason to be sure it will be installed > > on the end-user's system. > > Having nodes linking to non installed manuals is, in general, an issue. > But I do not think that defaulting to the english manual for non english > manuals is a good thing to do. Instead, it could be confusing, > especially if the missing translated manual is not shown prominently and > an english manual is substituted without much information and would not > convey the intention of the manual writer.
I guess there are disagreements about the best course of action in these cases: some think it is better to produce an error message, while others think falling back to the English version of the manual is better. So this will most probably be a user option, so that each one could customize what happens. > In my opinion, it would be much better to design a way to help with > installing a manual that is not already installed but exists and is > linked to irrespective of the issue of translations and still leave the > responsibility to setup the cross reference to the translator. Having > some way to check node links in Info through automatic downloading of > manuals and check of all the referencecs could be nice too, but without > any special treatments of manuals not in english. This is a much more complex solution, and it has some problematic aspects: it requires a network connection and some users consideer such features an annoyance. > Having @anchor indeed can help if the translator wants to link to the > english manual with translated node names. Still, in my opinion, it > should only happen if the translator has setup the @ref to link to the > english manual by using the english manual name as @ref manual argument. Having @anchor with the English node name will allow cross-manual links to go to a translated manual if it exists, falling back to the English manual: all it takes is try to find manual-LANG.info (when the user's language is LANG) before falling back to manual.info. Whereas cross-references with the translated manual could use the translated node names instead. This will also allow translators not to bother in cross-references about translations of node names in other manuals: they could simply use the English node names. > On the contrary, I think that having translators be responsible of cross > manual references is the best possible solution. It could mean a link > to an english or translated manual based on a choice and not on an > automatic rule. In that case, a choice seems to be better to me. Yes, it will probably need to be a user option.
