On Sunday 23 February 2003 09:18 am, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
> Another note:  for some key modules there is documentation only in
> Japanese.

This little sentence speaks volumes about one of the major challenges for 
Ruby.  The language is an international effort, with people contributing 
thoughts and ideas from all over the globe.  This is wonderful because oour 
enjoyment of Ruby gives us a common bond.  On the other hand, it is awkward, 
because the best documentation for one module is in Japanese, while another 
module's documentation is in English.  How much effort is being duplicated 
simply because we do not realize that somebody else already covered it in 
another language?

I would like to see a documentation browser in the style of Perldoc, but now I 
think that it would only address part of the issue.  Perhaps we can take a 
close look at how other successful projects have handled the challenges we 
are facing right now.  PHP and KDE are the first such projects that I think 
of, but I am sure there are others.

	- http://www.php.net/docs.php
	- http://i18n.kde.org/

I have seen several attempts to tie all of the Ruby documentation together.  I 
am wondering how successful they are, and any ideas that they could 
contribute to this, or any help that they need.  It would be embarassing to 
duplicate effort when the goal is to reduce duplication :-)

It is time to send this off and get more coffee before I start to ramble too 
much!

-Brian W
-- 
brian at coolnamehere dot com
http://coolnamehere.com