I don't think so.

For me (in the early days with Slackware) it would have been helpful if I had known more about "how do I localize my system". But I want to do this by myself. I love Slackware for it's simplicity, any localization on my systems is done by myself. I think that it would become much more complicated to understand the system if it were localized by default.

Otherwise I would suggest to use the new Slackware-documentation-project and write Howtos about localization. Maybe it would be nice, if such Howtos were not only in english. It would be important to discuss if there should be one Howto for all languages or several languagespecific Howtos.

Markus

Not sure I understand what you mean, Markus. Slackware will continue to display everything in English by default, unless you set $LANG to a different language.

Now if what you want is a selective localization, like people who use another language for KDE's GUI than the one set up in $LANG, maybe we could find a way of doing that.

EDIT Maybe not a smart solution, but one which comes to my mind: allow the admin/user to set up at the system/user level respectively a list of scripts which should always display their messages in English. Then at the beginning of every localized script, scan the list(s) for the script's name and if found, set LANG to en_EN.

EDIT2 We could even go as far as allowing to put regular expressions in the list, so that people could for instance exclude scripts with "pkg" in their name or even all scripts from localization, disregarding the value of $LANG.

Probably this is one of the reasons why I don't use KDE, I don't understand how it works, it is so complicated.

You are right, it is very easy to configure KDE for another language than english. But I don't like to have this with only one mouseclick but without understanding what really happens within the system.

Markus

And after that they will still be lost, if the documentation is not fully translated also. That is why I meant that this only makes sense when the documentation is also translated.

If the user is asking here he should be able to speak English anyways, so your first argument about not being able to read English would be somewhat pointless. But anyways, as I stated before, IMHO this unnecessarily complicates the ability to help. It may be somewhat viable if it happens with "usual" error-messages on the console, but asking someone to change the $LANG variable and restart the installer is from my point of view not an option, especially if that person has problems to understand the English language.
Trouble-shooting would be somewhat like "Exit the installer, type in 'LANG=en_US setup', choose the third option, then the first, then the first again, type in ..., choose the third again, ..."
I think you get the point (just thought about an installer simulator that can use the translations, to be used by people helping on forums).

So, in my opinion, a translated installer only makes sense in the (rare?) case that people are Linux literate, but aren't able to read the English language, or aren't able to read at all, since it seems to me that the major languages already have a translation for the installer documentation. (Offtopic, but I wonder if the translations are supported by Speakup).

This is of course different case with the other tools, like pkgtool, since they can be used independent from the installer on an already installed machine. But here also I think that a translation only makes sense if the documentation for those tools is fully translated already, so that Slackware users with questions about the tools can help themselves in the first place, before coming to forums where a translated tool may complicate things.

In short: I still think that a translated installer is not a good idea. Translating the other tools may work out well, if the documentation for those tools is also fully available in that particular language, including man-page, SlackDocs articles (if there are any for that specific tool) and the relating part of the Slackbook.

I would even go one step further and hold back translations for tools unless the documentation is not also available in that language. Sounds very restrictive, but is IMHO the only option that makes sense.
I am currently not involved in the Slackdocs project (except being subscribed to the mailing list) , so I can't say if the project is able to handle the massive effort to translate all the necessary documentation, I think you have a better insight to that.

What we now need to wait for anyways is a comment from Mr Volkerding about this whole thing.

Thanks! Too late? Actually I don't know when exactly this happened.

As you pointed out yourself, if someone does not read English well enough to post here you won't have to help him or her anyway ;)

But that does not mean that we would like that only people fluent in English adopt Slackware, or does it?

Distributions with localized installers already exist (even Slackware derivatives, like 'deepstyle'), so why not Slackware?

About setting $LANG to en_US to get messages in English, I had not specifically help during installation in mind. Here the target audience is people able to post here and that could be useful in other cases anyway.

Of course I am eager to know PV's views on the whole thing, but I would prefer to be able to present a more elaborated proposal, including ideas about how to overcome the obstacles we think of and close some open issues before requesting it.

Of course not, but to people not fluent in English Slackware is not really adoptable either as long as the documentation is not in a language they understand, too. I think it is easier to handle tools that are written in English with documentation in your language than tools translated to your language but with English documentation, assuming you don't speak English.

So I think the first thing that has to be done should be the translation of the main documentation, especially the Slackbook and the manpages for Slackware specific tools, with using an UTF-8 compatible version of man.
And then, after this is done the actual translation of the tools (of course with necessary adaptions in the manpages/Slackbook) should take place.
Which of course is opposite to your view, I would give the translation of the installer a rather low priority.

That's true. While I think those patches/additions should be submitted to upstream by those distributions, I don't think there's anything wrong with reporting the issues/patches to Slackware team. There's more chance for something to get accepted if we propose, than if we don't and stay quiet about it. So on our side, we have to be more verbose than what we are used to.

Well, there's also a problem of non-understanding: lack of people who actually understand the language. Without them, it's hard to check the quality and consistence of localizations. Not to mention you have to coordinate the localisation teams. But I agree with you and get what you're trying to say.

Btw, I think this discussion is useful, even if people don't agree about the proposed solutions. It's a real issue.

Slackware could go the way of the BSDs:

1. Support input and output of data in any language.

Means: Support of Unicode, foreign keyboard layouts, foreign date formats, foreign currencies and so on. In current Slackware this is not much an issue anymore.

2. Keep the operating system itself in a single language, but translate the documentation only.

Means: Assist a foreign-language sysadmin in using the English-only installer, pkgtools etc. This works. Bonus: There is nothing to change inside Slackware, just docs to create. If something gets out of sync, you can always fall back to English documentation.

3. Display language is only relevant to what end-users see.

The separation between computer-illiterate end-users and qualified administrators can help in the decision, what has to be translated. By installing the correct kde i18n package and changing LANG you can accommodate the first group. And if something beyond that goes wrong, the end-user gets a non-translated error message, which is actually useful for an expert.

This assumes both

1. Sophisticated documentation is necessary for anyone to use a Linux system, and
2. There is little localized documentation.

Is any one of the assumptions true?

No, this is about the person that isn't able to run the installer because the lack of understanding the English language, not about anyone. It is unlikely that persons that aren't able to install Slackware because the installer isn't translated to their language are able to run Slackware without documentation in their language.

The main peaces of documentation for Slackware are the Slackdocs project and the Slackbook. While the Slackdocs project has parts that are already translated, large parts aren't, especially that parts that contain the Slackbook.

Take myself for example. Thirteen years ago when I installed slackware for the first time, I made use of my experience in installing Windows 3.x and had little trouble with slackware's installer. The principles are the same. Their appearances are similar. One don't need to be able to use English as an everyday language before he/she can cope with the installer. The will be particularly true if the installer is localized.

After installation, I had a localized version of slackbook to help me with system management (see attached).

I believe you are worrying about no localized documentation merely because you know few languages, so you don't read slackbooks in other languages. Therefore you assume nonexistence of localized slackbooks.

So you were able to use a non-localized version of the installer, which means you are not the type of people we discuss about.

I stand corrected on this one, there are in fact 17 translations to other languages. And you are correct, I don't read the Slackbook in other languages, I prefer the English version. How that correlates to the number of languages I am able to understand is nonetheless beyond my understanding.

The ultimate goal of this project, as I see it, is to allow people who can't read English to:
(1) Install Slackware themselves.
(2) Perform themselves the basic configuration and maintenance tasks that are needed at least for a home usage.

You will hardly convince me that it is possible to reach that goal without localizing the installer and the main Slackware tools.

Admittedly this is necessary but not sufficient, especially for users who are not so computer literate, like average home users of Windows for instance (no offense intended, I do have some among my friends and relatives).

So I agree that the availability of a good documentation in the same locales concerning the installer and the Slackware tools is very much necessary.

I do not care that much which one will be available first (the localization of the software or of the documentation) and am not eager to participate to a _chicken_or_egg_ discussion about that.

I do think though that when translating documentation into some language it is desirable to begin with the Slackware tools. I can't impose that of course as all the work is done by volunteers, but I am pretty confident that for most locale targets we will find people eager to work on both tasks (localizing tools and documentation about them).

That there is no localized documentation available is what made you come to a conclusion that localized installer does not work.

I can't find any reason for which you concluded there was no localized documentation other than you simply don't know other languages and you believe what you don't know don't actually exist.

Can you not see attachments? I had a localized slackbook, though it was about 13 year ago.
But yes, I understand you don't believe such things did exist because what you don't know of could not have been there.