From: Emmanuel Charpentier <charpent@bacbuc.dyndns.org>
Subject: Questions to lists / translations
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 10:12:27 +0100
Organization: Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org

Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> 
[ ... High number iof questions to the list, although of good level ...
]

> This is a universal problem. It is that once a particular package reaches
> that critical mass it is completely impossible for a small team of
> developers to both help the user community _and_ to develop anything at
> all. I've seen this in both the free and the comercial software worlds.
> 
> The  commercial world tries to solve it by having "Knowledge Base"
> machinery of some kind or another. My own exp. is that it simply does not
> work.

A good "knowledge base" for PostgreSQL was the mailing list archive.
However, it started having serious problems abck in november, and I
haven't checked it since.

> It might help to install ht://dig so that the online documentation can be
> searched easily. If people think that that would be a good idea then I'd
> be happy to make that contribution.

This engine could also usefully be aimed at the mailing lists archive !
However, a *very* useful feature would be a "human made" indexing. Quite
a load of work ...

It might also be useful to have on the lists people with a good
knowledge of PostgreSQL (at least recent versions) dedicated to
answering these questions. This would ease the load on developpers
proprio dictu.

This way, you would have a kind of a three-tiered help system :
	- Search engine on the docs, the FAQs and the lists archive ;
	- "Answer" volunteers for hard-but-answerable-from-the-specs questions
;
	- Developpers for questions requiring a good knowledge of PostgreSQL
internals.

> Another point is that PostgreSQL is widely used by people who have learnt
> English at school. English is a proper horror of a language & it must be
> extremely difficult to understand the docs. if you didn't learn English on
> your Mother's knee. I learnt French at school, but I would really _hate_
> to have to understand PostgreSQL from French docs. I'm suggesting that now
> that the critical mass of users is nearly upon us that a serious
> translation effort be made. Unfortunately I am not sufficiently able in
> any foreign language to help with translation, but could perhaps attempt
> to make the language of the documentation somewhat easier to understand.

Agreed. But keep in mind that a tralnslation is a *huge* work,
especially in a domain such as computers where most competent people are
used to more-or-less "think in English" about their domain of expertise.

Furthermore, PostgreSQL docs are a hell of a moving target ...
Therefore, such a project needs a *lot* of coordination.

Any thoughs ?

					Emmanuel Charpentier
--
Emmanuel Charpentier		charpent@bacbuc.dyndns.org
				charpent@bacbuc.fdn.fr