htdocs and the newest news.

[Derek Atkins]

Neil Williams <linux at codehelp.co.uk> writes:

> OK. With the exception of the news files, the website in svn isn't going to 
> change often.
>
>> My fear is that someone makes a small change to a website and now the
>> international viewer gets a partial translation until the po file gets
>> updated.  I suppose the flip side is an out-of-date translation..  but
>> I'm not sure which is worse, out of date or partial.
>
> ? Either present as the same - if the po file is behind the site, English will 
> prevail. It's just how gettext works. (en_US in our case). The existing 
> translations are outdated and partial. At least having a familiar po file 
> (with a smattering of newer news in a single language dependent directory) 
> should be easier than asking people to translate a mixture of HTML, PHP and 
> TXT files across some twenty subdirectories.

Let me be more explicit.  I'm worried about someone finding a spelling
error, or making what would be a minor edit to a paragraph, and that
edit causing all translation to fail because the strings no longer
match.  This means that every time you fix a spelling error you now
need to fix every PO file as well.  That's a lot of work for trivial
text changes.

> Judging by how programs get translated, I'd say partial is not as
> bad to the users as we may like to think. Lots and lots of
> translated programs have only a fraction of the total number of
> messages translated. As long as certain critical areas are covered,
> many users seem happy with partial. The existing wiki translation
> help can guide others in how to add more translated messages.

A website != a program.

I wish I knew more about generalized international website
development.  There's got to be some "standard" way
internationalization is done with quazi-static content.  I honestly
don't think most sites use gettext() for the main pages.

> I'm sure someone will volunteer in time - after all that's how we have the 
> current mix. Having a POT file may help as it's easier to handle than the 
> previous format. We can ask the GNU Translation Project.

Perhaps we should ask on gnucash-user?

>> In fact I almost think that's true for the normal website content,
>> too..  Keep in mind that MOST of the content is now off on the Wiki,
>> and the wiki is NOT translated!
>
> The Wiki, however, is a lot easier for people to amend and if
> someone wants to add a translation of an existing page, they
> can. It's just not transparent as if the site was to detect the
> language from the browser, as the main site now does.

It's easy to amend, yes, but how can we get wiki.gnucash.org to also
provide a German interface, a Spanish interface, etc?  Clearly it's
somewhat possible, wikipedia does it..  But I have no idea how to set
that up for us.

> How often are we actually going to be changing it? (with the exception of 
> news?) Most changing content will be on the wiki.

True, the most often change is the news..  And the documentation.  But
the documentation is a separate beast.

> I guess the answer to both is a decent syntax highlighting editor. I
> use gedit for php and html - bluefish is good too, as it Kate, or my
> old stalwart, vi.  ;-)

See, I use emacs which makes paren-highlighting very easy..  Every
time you hit right-paren it shows you the corresponding left-paren.
It probably also works for other things, too, like php, if you have
the right mode installed..

>> > (and php is only on the website, it's not as critical as the scheme in
>> > gnucash.)
>>
>> I dont know -- people who can't get to the website usually can't
>> download the program!  :)

Right, which makes the website accessibility even MORE imporant!  The
website is what entices the user to download the program.  It NEEDS to
be there.

Speaking of which, we're already getting requests for 1.9 screenshots!

-derek

PS: It sounds like Linas is going to update the website to pull from
SVN on MONDAY.  So we should have most stuff "solved" by then.  ;)

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available