Re: Hosting vs linking (was Re: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-updates/translations.html)

À 09:27 10/02/99 +0900, Martin J. Duerst a écrit :
>At 10:56 99/02/09 -0500, Francois Yergeau wrote:
>> What's the difference between linking with a disclaimer and hosting with
>> the same disclaimer?
>
>Adding a link takes five minutes. If any problems are discovered, we
>can also remove it in five minutes. Hosting means that we have to
>check a lot of things, it's much more work.

That was not the point at all.  Whether it hosts a translation or not, I'm
quite sure the W3C will link to it with a fat disclaimer saying "we do not
vouch for this translation, we haven't checked it, it's not official, we're
not responsible, etc. etc.".  So it doesn't need to "check a lot of
things", hosting or not.

>So why don't you try and submit a translation if you have one?

Soon.  Translation is underway and I was inquiring to Ian about what we
could do with it.

>We are not shy. We are trying to achieve a maximum of effect with
>a minimum of effort. We currently barely manage to make sure that
>the Recommendations produced are appropriately internationalized.
>My personal opinion is that this is more important than having
>the translations hosted.

I don't see why you oppose these two.  Internationalizing the specs
*before* they are approved is entirely distinct from translating them
*after* they are published. And since the translations are done by
volunteers, no W3C resources need be consumed for hosting, except for a
small amount of disk space and bandwidth.  This doesn't hurt the i18n
effort at all.

>> Doesn't look like a warm welcome to me, especially for translations made
>> bona fide, without expending Consortium resources.
>
>What is the original problem?

I had asked Ian where a translation of XML1.0 would go.  There is no
placeholder link inside the XML spec, as there is in HTML4, pointing to
translations.  This question is also unresolved, independent of the hosting
issue.

>Also, because the translations are done by volunteers, they are
>frequently done piece by piece, especially if they are large.

That's circular.  The translations are made by volunteers because the W3C
won't expand any resources on them; and the W3C won't expand any resource
on translations because they are made by volunteers.  I'm beginning to
suspect that the sentence in the Process about translations being welcome
is not worth the electrons it's written in.

>We couldn't host partial translations, and handle all the updates.

Then don't.  That's not the issue.

>There are also cases where there are two or more teams, and this
>would mean that we would have to favor one of the translations,
>or host two differing translations.

Or ask them to reconcile and submit one, of potentially better quality.

-- 
François Yergeau

Received on Wednesday, 10 February 1999 14:30:00 UTC