[ic] Dphimentation available in German???

[IC-Admin]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Michael Zwiener wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> is there anywere a documentation available in German? I didn't found it
> jet...
> 
> Greets
> Michael

No, apparently not (yet). But honestly do you think it would
help you to understand IC better if you had documentation available
in German ? I guess if wordings or expressions in the documentation
don't make sense to you in the English version, there might be three 
possible reasons for that.

1. you lack some prerequisite knowledge to understand the meaning
   of a certain expressions or technical terms
2. the documentation don't build up your discovery through the
   package in a logical order, starting from the bottom up, or let's say
   following the order a newbie would approach the package.
3. the wording of the documentation is not clear enough in English
   itself.

A translation of the documentation wouldn't help much with point 1,
wouldn't help much with point 2 and wouldn't help to produce a clear
enough German translation when dealing with point 3.

It is no easy task to do point 2. properly, because people with too
diverse backgrounds want to use IC for two diverse purposes. You
can't write something which fits everybody's needs (and for sure not
on a completely volunteer basis) and there have been (in the course
of the events of the last two years I would say) more urgent
tasks to be accomplished first by the developer team.

To recognize what might be missing in your prerequisite knowledge
is more or less up to you. I have found that people who try to give
advice in that regard, mostly are not believed by the people
who need the advice most. (You know that saying that "an advice is
something you knew all along but never wanted to know anyway", right ?)
Point 3 can be resolved by a good editor.

So, I think you just need to be a bit more patient. People will start
to translate, when they feel they are ready for it. So far everybody
seemed to be busy to keep up with the changes and understand what
a terrific package IC has become and fill in the holes of their own
knowledge to make good use of IC.

Regards,
Birgitt