Re: lynx-dev Re: Hello/LYNX

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 12 Jun 1999, Webmaster Jim wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 12, 1999 at 10:56:40AM +0200, alain kernoa wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I work in a French hospital in Paris, and we have a lot of terminals,
> > so for our intranet we must use Lynx but most of person of this
> > hospital don't read english, so how can we do to obtain all help
> > user's messages in french, for examples the help keys ?
> > 
> > Thanks a lot.
> > See you soon.
> 
> Most of the developers of Lynx only know English, but that hasn't
> stopped us trying to make it available to others. So far, many messages
> have been translated to French (and more to German). The French
> translations came from Lynx users in Canada. I'm hoping for translated
> versions of help pages and other documents (real soon now).

If they can overcome the initial "how to make it all work on SunOS
(Solaris?) hurdle, it may be more realistic to let them write/update
their own translations as needed, rather than wait for someone else
to do it.  And encourage to contribute back.  Once set up, it's not
so difficult (especially if they have someone familiar with emacs...)

The good thing is that translation can be done incrementally - first
do the messages that users actually see most often, as much as is needed
to help them get started.  Also translate at first only some most
necessary help pages, like keyboard navigation keys.

You didn't provide a pointer to the currently available (incomplete)
translations:  <http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/po/>

I think a link to it should also be on the 
       http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/release/
and
       http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/
pages, with the appropriate disclaimers that it's preliminary, incomplete
etc.  IMO making this more visible would encourage more people to at least
become curious and maybe work on it (and/or contact the translation team).

Unfortunately, some of the more useful aspects of lynx haven't yet been
internationalized.  I'm thinking in particular of the KEYMAP display.

> There is a Free Translation Project that may have volunteers who could
> do this (http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard). Any other help you could
> give would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, the link to the "French site" from that page is currently
broken.

Has there been any progress in the last months regarding lynx in the FTS?
I couldn't find any hint of lynx in the "Central PO file registry" linked
from the above URL.

   Klaus