Re: @dircategory (Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance)

[Patrice Dumas]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 05:08:28PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> This is a much more complex solution, and it has some problematic
> aspects: it requires a network connection and some users consideer
> such features an annoyance.

Of course, and not only that, it also requires a way to know which
manual exist, where they are, and possibly a way to install them or
point to a way to install.

> Having @anchor with the English node name will allow cross-manual
> links to go to a translated manual if it exists, falling back to the
> English manual: all it takes is try to find manual-LANG.info (when the
> user's language is LANG) before falling back to manual.info.  Whereas
> cross-references with the translated manual could use the translated
> node names instead.  This will also allow translators not to bother in
> cross-references about translations of node names in other manuals:
> they could simply use the English node names.

The node name may be visible in the output, so if English node names are
used they won't be in the translated manual language.  So I do not think
that is it correct, in general, to use the English node names even if
they link to the correct node in a translated manual with English node
names as anchors.

-- 
Pat