[Typo3-doc] Greetings from the US

[Alex Heizer]

JoH wrote:

>>>Thanks for your perspective. That's along the lines of what we were
>>>discussing about how non-native-English-speakers probably won't
>>>notice the difference between US-English and UK-English. Even the
>>>small difference between us calling it British-English and you
>>>calling it UK-English indicates that we think differently over here.
>>>:)
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>In fact in Europe we call it Oxford-English and raise our nose a
>>little bit. We only call it UK-English for american people because
>>they surley don't know where Oxford is. If we had the time we would
>>prepare the documentations as a Micky-Mouse comic strip for US. Most
>>american people can't read at all. At school they are gun shouting
>>and knife fighting all the day instead of learning. ;-)
>>    
>>
>
>You forgot to mention that they all weigh at least 300 pounds and munch fast
>food the whole day while wasting 25% of the worldwide energy resources for
>cars with V8 engines, air conditions and swimming pools in the californian
>desert.
>  
>

Woah! I guess I'm not eating enough!! More pies for me!! :)

>Well - I never understood why it makes such a big difference for Brits and
>Americans if the "proper" english is used.
>It's like having a German, Austrian and Swiss list just because there might
>be some grammatical and/or vocabular differences.
>In fact there is just one "German" list and most of the people are happy
>with it regardless of the "german flavour" that is used in their local area.
>
>I don't think it will raise ones knowledge about handling of colours in the
>GIFBUILDER if you write it "colors" instead.
>But I think it makes sense to translate some documents from "denglish"
>(which might be danish english or deutsches english) to a correct "universal
>english" version.
>
>Joey
>  
>
No, I agree. I personally prefer the Oxford English way of spelling. I 
can't tell you how many times my spell-checker has "corrected" my using 
an 's' instead of a 'z' in words like "organised", "analysed", etc. 
(which I *know* are spelt correctly, btw...) But the reality of our 
specific situation means a potential US customer is going to show 
preference to a CMS whose documentation is in US English. So the task is 
to accommodate them to achieve T3's goal of increasing market share in 
the US market. Which means, tailor the documentation to meet their 
expectations, not what we are comfortable with.

So basically, we need to make US-English docs, there are already 
Oxford-English, "denglish", etc. docs... how can our necessary efforts 
help to benefit the documentation, in general? It's going to take a lot 
of volunteer effort on our part, so for a long time the current docs 
aren't going to go away. But I hope we can help out with what everyone 
else is doing so that you all can benefit from the work we have to do 
over here on this side of the pond.

Alex