[asterisk-doc] Fwd: Re: [asterisk-dev] [policy] Language specific prompts

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Thursday 12 February 2009 20:56:39 D Tucny wrote:
> 2009/2/13 Tilghman Lesher <tilghman at mail.jeffandtilghman.com>
>
> > On Feb 10, 2009, at 10:20 AM, Russell Bryant wrote:
> > > On Feb 6, 2009, at 11:57 AM, Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > > > I am proposing, as a matter of policy, that anybody wishing to make
> > > > ANY
> > > > change whatsoever to multi-language support, that they should have
> > > > to document
> > > > every single prompt in that native language, in a fashion that is
> > > > identical to
> > > > the Hebrew document (which may be found in doc/lang/).
> > >
> > > I do not have a problem with this from a high level.  However, I would
> > > like to suggest a different approach to getting this documentation
> > > generated.
> > >
> > > I really do not want to rely on waiting for someone to show up who is
> > > just trying to help the project by reporting a bug to then ask them to
> > > undergo a large undertaking to get the problem fixed.  It's likely it
> > > will just scare people off.
> > >
> > > Instead, we should probably take a more proactive approach by
> > > requesting help on the mailing lists to get a group of community
> > > members looking for a way to help involved in getting this
> > > documentation generated.
> >
> > Well, here's one suggestion that we need documentation support on.
> > Is anybody able to look at this from languages other than English,
> > Spanish, and French, and document the sounds embedded in Asterisk, so
> > that native speakers can record their own prompts?
>
> I'll have a look at the Chinese language stuff, I noticed a couple of
> specific sounds recently relating to numbering when fixing some stuff
> recently... I think it would be of benefit to have text documents in
> doc/lang though, even if there are other format docs available too...

The main reason I didn't go with text is that standard Unix text editors
don't always treat the file fairly, and the format pretty much has to be an
implied encoding (UTF-8?  UTF-16?  Big5?).  Making the file an OpenDocument
format ensures that everybody who opens the document sees the same thing.

Actually, it was my own Western-centric brain that suggested text initially,
and it was only after people pointed out that not all languages use the
Western alphabet that we decided that would not be sufficient.  The translator
for Hebrew suggested Excel format, and I moved that OpenDocument would be more
appropriate for an open source project.

-- 
Tilghman