Daniel F. Kudwien wrote:
Well, I think Jose refers to those developers "out there", who might develop custom modules for local (non-English sites), and might not want / be able to write English help pages. Hacking in empty base files for English might not be a good option.
Gabor
Isn't this an edge-case? Even if my primary language is German, I will write the module documentation in English first. By doing that module developers ensure that a module (including its documentation) is actually usable for all Drupal users, speaking all kind of different languages. Also, by doing that I often determine phrases that may be hard to translate into other languages, including German.
Daniel
There are modules and modules, and clients and clients you may work for. Some modules are just too site specific to be contributed, though the site may need later an English translation (or not). And when developing a custom module for a client, even if you are allowed to contribute it later, I don't think it's ok to charge the client for the time to write an English documentation page (plus changes, fixes and retranslations) they don't need at all. Unless of course the work is meant to be contributed from the start so you write English docs first. That said, it's not my case anymore as I work now most of the time for the 'English speaking world' :-), and most of the time the question is more 'how can we make this generic enough to be contributable', but the other case is not that rare. Many modules are born because of very specific website or people's needs and may end up in contrib or not, not because we developers don't want to, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. So just lets make easier it to happen. Jose