Re: Arabic Man Pages (AMAN)

[Mohammed Elzubeir <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 09:10:40AM -0700, Anmar Oueja wrote:
> Hello All:
> 
> This is my first posting on this mailing list. I am very happy to see an 
> arab interest in linux. I my self been using linux for several years and 
> worked with 2 startup companies designing and managing 2 network 
> appliances using Linux. I am a Debian linux user.

Welcome aboard ;) We are very happy to see you interested as well.

> 
> I think one of the much needed Arabization for Linux is translating the 
> MAN pages to arabic (AMAN). The commands and their options should stay 
> in english, afterall we want to be compatible with the rest of the 
> world. As for the description, it should be in Arabic so the user does 
> not have to learn english just to understand what this command does.
> 

That has always been in the back of our minds, but we are also trying to
prioritize things as we have limited people and resources. If you are
interested in taking the lead on the project, email 
<contact (at) arabeyes dot org> and we can work out the details of getting you
started ;)

> I know that most people want to use KDE or GNOME is Arabic but that does 
> not really help our Arabic speaking developer community, which what we 
> should focus on if we want to have more Arabic-friendly software.
> 

Well this largely depends on the user. Most new users to Linux (or computers
in general) are going to want/expect an Arabic GUI. Others, who have been used
to the English interface are not going to like the change (like myself for
example).

The developer community at large is very English-oriented, and that is why man
pages didn't come as a top priority (when compared to gnome/kde). However, it
is certainly something we would like to do (and will do, with your help)!

> I have some ideas that I think  worth looking into.

Please share ;) I would suggest you subscribe to the 'doc' list, and continue
this discussion from over there (since it is where all the documentation
related issues are discussed).

later
-- 
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| Mohammed Elzubeir    | Visit us at:                 |
|                      |  http://www.arabeyes.org/    |
| Arabeyes Project     | Homepage:                    |
| Unix the 'right' way |  http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
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