The board member who has been trying to follow the project recommends we put the issue of US vs Int’l English to a vote. Apparently, the HTTP project did so in the past (and decided on US English). So this is now a discuss thread leading to a vote.
Personally, I don’t want to just choose one over the other, so I am hopeful we can quickly arrive at a plan for localization that minimizes effort and satisfies the community. First, I think we need to enumerate the places where we have text. OTOH it is: 1) Release package documents: README, RELEASE_NOTES, LICENSE, NOTICE, CONTRIBUTING, etc. 2) API names (classes, properties, styles, etc) 3) ASDoc and JavaDoc comments (really, any comments that end up in user documentation) 4) Written user documentation 5) Website 6) Wiki 7) Error messages in the tools 8) Text in the SDKs and Applications we release that show up in some GUI The proposal is: 1) Release package documents will be written in US English but try to avoid words that have different spellings or meanings in Int’l English. Interested community members can post translated copies of READMEs and RELEASE_NOTES (but not the others like LICENSE and NOTICE) on our wiki. This is true for any language, not just Int’l English. The wiki copies will have to start with a disclaimer that they might be out-of-date. The first sentence under the title in README and RELEASE_NOTES will point to the wiki and also warn that copies there may be out-of-date. Any translated copy that falls more than one release behind will be hidden. The reason for not bundling translated versions is to avoid bottlenecks in releasing if translators are not readily available 2) API Names will use US English spellings, especially since the W3C is already using “color”. 3) ASDoc and JavaDoc comments will use US English. Interested community members are welcome to build translated copies of the generated docs. We will not hide stale copies as I think the ASDoc is more obvious about which version it is for and folks will figure it out. Proposals to reduce the overhead of tracking changes in order to update the translated copies are welcome after this proposal is approved. 4, 5) Any written user documentation and website materials will hopefully have translated copies in as many languages as possible. If we can’t figure out how to auto-redirect based on browser locale, you will land on US English and the US English version and the main flex.a.o page and a few other popular pages will mention that there are other versions available. There is no “master” version. The versions can all be improved upon without requiring synchronizing with other language versions. 6) The wiki pages can be in any language. When modifying a page, use the language that is already there. Interested wiki authors are welcome to provide translated copies of the wiki pages. 7, 8) All of these strings should be in locales. The overall principle is that things in 1, 2 and 3 all end up in a release package. Because the official Apache LICENSE uses US English, it will appear more consistent to have all of the other things in the package use US English. But we should point folks to other translated versions if they exist. Feedback welcome! -Alex
