Re: util-linux v2.39 with translated man pages by default?

["Mario Blättermann" <mario.blaettermann@gmail.com>]

Hello Karel,

Am Mi., 26. Apr. 2023 um 12:28 Uhr schrieb Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com>:
>
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2023 at 08:24:47PM +0200, Mario Blättermann wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > when I run ./configure (without any option) on the current Git content, I get:
> >
> >         Manual pages:              yes
> >         Manual pages translated:   no
> >
> > This means, creating and installing the translated man pages is still
> > not enabled by default. What may we expect for v2.39? If this remains
>
> Good point. I have enabled it:
>  https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/commit/9acfc349e0ea68a92baf818cc659121f40ab9c04
>
Thanks.

> but as in other cases, the default is "check", and the result depends on
> if you have "po4a" installed, and if not installed, you will see a
> warning
>
>     configure: WARNING: po4a not found; not building translated man pages
>
> but ./configure will success.
>

This is OK so far.

> > disabled, no downstream packager will notice it, and the effort of the
> > translators (6 languages, more than 500 translated *.adoc files) was
> > for the trashscan.
>
> I need to think about how to push it to Fedora/RHEL; I'll probably
> create a sub-package with the translations, one for all or per
> language. Is there any good practice for man pages?
>

Please have a look at procps-ng. It ships *both* UI and man page
translations in a subpackage named procps-ng-l10n. This would be an
acceptable solution: Users who need translated user interfaces, should
also get the corresponding translated man pages. But this shouldn't be
treated as the "usual" way for command line tools. For example,
psmisc, dos2unix or wcd ship the translated man pages in the base
package.

On the other hand, have a look at Gnome packages. The help files (in
/usr/share/help/$LANG) reside in the base package; I haven't found any
separate packages for the localized user docs. Besides the above
approach with outsourcing all i18n-related files in a "-i18n"
subpackage, you could test how much bigger the packages become when
you ship the translated man pages along with their English originals
in the same package. I think the growth is acceptable, given the
nowadays' hard disk capacities.

Best Regards,
Mario