R devel - Aug 2018 - Translating Rd files

Dear All,

are there any resources (code, guidelines, anything) for translating Rd files?
As far as I can tell, the help system does not have support for this.
Have I missed something? Is such support desired?

I am thinking about a way to register manual pages in different
languages, and then`help()` would bring up the page with the preferred
language, defaulting to the current locale.

Thanks, Best,
Gabor

On 21/08/2018 5:53 PM, G?bor Cs?rdi wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> are there any resources (code, guidelines, anything) for translating Rd
files?
> As far as I can tell, the help system does not have support for this.
> Have I missed something? Is such support desired?
As of last year, support for this was seen as desirable but no action 
had been taken to put it in place.  The thinking was that it was too 
much work for the translators to have to follow every update to each 
help page, so the translated pages would likely soon be out of date.

Duncan Murdoch
> 
> I am thinking about a way to register manual pages in different
> languages, and then`help()` would bring up the page with the preferred
> language, defaulting to the current locale.

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 12:30 AM Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/08/2018 5:53 PM, G?bor Cs?rdi wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > are there any resources (code, guidelines, anything) for translating
Rd files?
> > As far as I can tell, the help system does not have support for this.
> > Have I missed something? Is such support desired?
>
> As of last year, support for this was seen as desirable but no action
> had been taken to put it in place.  The thinking was that it was too
> much work for the translators to have to follow every update to each
> help page, so the translated pages would likely soon be out of date.
I agree that this the biggest concern. In some cases maybe one can ensure
that the translated docs are still in sync. E.g. if the translated man page is
within the translated package. Then it is the package authors'
responsibility
to keep it updated (or to remove it), and the regular package check tools can
be used as well.

This does make collaboration with "external" translators and package
updates
somewhat more cumbersome, and it does not scale very well. But it still could
be a start. Most packages will not have a hundred translations any time soon.

If we allow translations in separate packages, that does make things more
complicated.

Gabor
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> >
> > I am thinking about a way to register manual pages in different
> > languages, and then`help()` would bring up the page with the preferred
> > language, defaulting to the current locale.
>
>