[Rd] Translating Rd files

[Gábor Csárdi]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 12:30 AM Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/08/2018 5:53 PM, Gábor Csárdi 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 help page, so the translated pages would likely soon be out of date.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.
>
>