[Rd] feature request: multi-language support

[Prof Brian Ripley]

I wondered what was meant by `manuals', but I assumed it was not the help 
system.  Some packages do have manuals, usually installed from inst/doc
(and there is a vignette mechanism to provide manuals of this type).

If you do mean help pages, there are questions of whether more than one 
language should be installed (and BTW the .Rd files are installed under 
man) and whether QC should check all of them, ....

If we are taking multi-language support seriously, we need to be thinking 
about Chinese, Japanese, ....  We don't currently have support for 
multi-byte encodings, although we are discussing it.  We tend to make 
manuals via latex/texinfo which AFAIK do not support multi-byte encodings 
(although projects to do so are under way).  One issue is that there is a 
move to multi-byte encoding (specifically UTF-8) even for Western European 
languages.

On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Byron Ellis wrote:

> Perhaps something like this?
> 
> <package>/help/<two letter code>
> 
> though, perhaps, you might actually want a more general
> 
> <package>/<two letter code>/help,html,etc
> 
> and then a locale option that specifies the preference of language 
> availability (someone might prefer german, then french and then english 
> or something like)?
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 15, 2004, at 6:09 PM, Peter Kleiweg wrote:
> 
> >
> > Could it be possible for packages to have manuals in multiple
> > languages?
> >
> > I'm not saying all manuals should be in multiple languages, but
> > I think there should be a mechanism for package writers to add
> > manuals in multiple languages, if they think it useful.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595