CVS README

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

Here's the updated version of the README in the translations directory.
Comments welcome.

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The directories that are populated so far:

alice/          Lewis Carrol's "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland",
                texinfo format.
drbible/        The Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, texinfo format.
german/         Translating brochures into german, XML format.
originals/      Texts copied verbatim from the Gutenberg Project.

In general, please do _not_ start at the beginning of whatever you're
working on (i.e. I started translating Alice with Chapter 5).  Everyone
will, by default, be inclined to start at the beginning, and that gets
_ugly_.


Notes on Changes
================

People should _absolutely_ edit other people's work. Hopefully things
will eventually settle on the 'best' translation.  So please, read what
other people have done!

However, I do request that when you do so you put a comment (@c at th
beginning of the line marks comments) saying why you made the change.


Here's a small set of guidelines on those comments (Courtesy of Jay
Kominek):


1) If there is a grammatical error where the correction is obvious, then
fix it. No need to make a note of anything.

2) If there is a grammatical error where the correction isn't obvious,
then fix it, and make a little note.

3) If you think that some grmmatical form was poorly chosen, make a
note, but don't do anything.

4) If you think a word is really badly chosen, make a note.

5) If you think a word is _stylistically_ poorly chosen, (because you
don't like some cmavo, or when gismu are similar. 'drink' vs 'eat' for
something ambigous, like gelatin), then just make a mental note of it to
discuss when translation is nearing completion and the whole thing has
to be made consistent.


Worrying about consistency during the initial phase of a group
translation project seems like it might be premature. (Though something
to keep in the back of your mind.) A final pass for consistency will be
needed no matter what.

So, don't worry about consistency too much.  Stylistic consistency will
be up to whomever edits the final draft, but let's get it _done_ first,
yes?


Changes most certainly _are_ recorded, this is the whole point of using
CVS.  I can revert to _any_ previous version if people give me a good
reason to do so (i.e. you accidentally checked in a version with most of
the text missing).



Notes on TexInfo
================

Lines that start with '@c ' or '@comment ' are comments, that will
show up in none of the compiled versions.  The original text has been
placed in lines of this type, with break for paragraphs.

To help with the translation, simply pick a paragraph and enter the
lojban text, straight up, _without_ '@c ' or any other markup,
_after_ the original paragraph.  Almost all the markup this file
needs has already been done for you.

Note that there should be a blank line before and after each
paragraph.

To deal with places where the exact layout of the text is important
(just about any poetry, for example), place the command '@format' before
the text and '@end format' at the end.
~