htdocs and the newest news.

[Neil Williams]

On Friday 10 February 2006 9:56 pm, Derek Atkins wrote:
> True, although one would think we could continue to do translation via
> separate translation subdirs (at least for the main content -- it
> probably makes sense to use php + gettext to translate the menus --
> the menus dont change).

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  I suppose the flip side is an out-of-date translation..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 I'm not sure which is worse, out of date or partial.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translations are outdated and partial.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.

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.

> > What do you think about translating the news items?
>
> I still have no idea who does this translation..

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.

> But my feeling is 
> that yes, news should be translated if there's a translation
> available; otherwise it should be printed in English.

gettext does that for us, just like with the gnucash code. I'll sort out the 
rest via the news-script.

> > My conversion of oldnews.phtml is geared more towards easier translation
> > than easier editing

> For the news file I think it's more important towards easier editing.

Fair enough.

> 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.

> I honestly have no idea.  I'd like to think that news will get
> translated, but I also have no idea how rapidly changes to the website
> will get translated.

Same here.

> Keep in mind it can take weeks or months to get 
> application translation, and AFAIK we still don't get full
> translations!  I can't imagine how rapidly website content will get
> translated.

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

> I think multiple translation files is just file..  It's easy to upload
> content to the website (or at least it will be once the migration is
> done).  Indeed, I think multiple small translated news files is going
> to be MUCH better than a single PO file.

OK. I'm easy with that.

> Why can't we do something like:

news-script.php can do what we need - it already has the necessary code.

> We know what language the user wants.  Why can't we just go over the
> list of news items and if there's an entry in the translated news
> directory we use that instead of the english version?

No problem - now that I don't have to get news into a single po file.

> Unmatched parentheses in scheme is just as bad as umatched
> greater-than, less-than tags in PHP/HTML, and remembering to do the ?>
> to close your tags and such.  Uggh..

:-)

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.
;-)

> > (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!  :)

:-)

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20060210/6fed32ac/attachment.bin