View source for User talk:Yurchor

Hi Yurchor I'm sorry you couldn't make it to Essen - we had a lot of fun and we missed you. I thought I would just give you a brief summary of what we did with UserBase.

You have probably already noticed our new logo, and the addition of help items to the sidebar.

Besides the sidebar, Pipesmoker also made a lot of tweaks to formatting. We no longer have the sudden break in background color below the sidebar; it has been replaced by a nice transition. And the <tt> and <code> tags have been made useful for us. He also improved the nested lists. We added something about this in the help pages.

On the translation side Nikerabbit did great work on several longstanding problems and some new ones that came up:

• We can now delete or move pages, even when they have been translated
• It is also now possible to remove a language, when someone have begun translating and then left without really doing anything.
• Special:myLanguage links now show up red, when the page does not exist. (I just found an unintended side effect of this - links to untranslated pages also show up red and no longer takes readers to the English page, so this is not over yet).

When Anne, Hans and I were not busy putting others to work or otherwise pestering them we found time to do a lot of cleanup . For example we have removed a lot of dead pages and redirects, that are no longer needed. We spent quite some time cleaning up the help pages, adding new content, removing obsolete things and moving some things to new places. Among other things we added a bit about the format of dates that should make them completely unambiguous. We also made a new template for putting UI icons in text and described it in the help files.

We had discussions about how to attract more contributions. Hans had some interesting ideas involving the forums. They are not implemented yet, but could potentially be a great way to attract new writers. And toma had ideas about making a link between KHelpCenter and UserBase, that would allow users to add tips at the click of a mouse. We also had discussions of a complete redesign of the front page to make it more welcoming to contributors and easier to navigate for newcomers. This is something that probably will not happen until the new design for kde.org is in place.

We also talked about dockbook. Some projects wants to add old manual to UserBase and use it as a base for a new manual written in UserBase. It is painful to do by hand, so some kind of automated solution should be found. We can already transfer documents the other way as well as to pdf - even letting users pick and choose which parts they wants to include.

The most controversial issue came up at the very end. Toma and neverendingo advocated a much more open approach to translations - trusting the wisdom of the crowd is after all the idea of a wiki. Anne and I were not quite convinced. In theory we agree, but for many languages we are dealing with crowds of one. We might end up moving towards more openness, but we feel that caution is called for. Nothing has been decided on this matter yet.

This is as far as my notes go - I'm sure I have forgotten something. I hope you find this helpful.

Claus chr

Thanks for this complete report.

Yurchor

I don't understand your comment. Surely, KonsoleDevelopment is the original page - or am I missing something?

Claus chr

Consider the following situation:

1) User read the instruction and want to follow it. 2) He clicks the link and opens localized page (with Special:myLanguage). 3) He notice that the missing new "Bla-bla" section of Configuration.

Question: How to add the description of "Bla-bla" on localized page? Answer: The section should be added to the original page.

So what is the point to send the user to the localized page, right?

Yurchor

I get your point. However, a user who knows enough to make additions to a page probably also knows how to navigate to the original page. On the other hand, a more casual user who perhaps doesn't even speak English might still be able to provide valuable suggestions on the Talk page.

I don't think that leaving out Special:myLanguage is going to be a problem to anyone - navigating to the translation of choice is easy enough; but I wonder if it is not a good idea to remain consistent even in special cases like this.

Claus chr

Ok, I reverted my change.

Yurchor

I think the pages in this list pre-date the current translation system. Should they be deleted?

Інструменти
Вступ до KDE
Глосарій
Для чого призначено KDE
Ласкаво просимо до бази даних користувачів KDE
Освітні програми
Отримання довідки
Пошук програм
Програми
Програми/Ігри
Програми/Інтернет
Програми/Доступність
Програми/Мультимедійні програми
Програми/Офісні
Програми/Розробка
Програми/Система
Робота з графікою і зображеннями
Стільниця
Таблиця еквівалентних програм
Як задавати питання

annew

Yes, they are obsolete. Please delete them. Thanks for your work.

Yurchor

Done :-)

annew

Hi. Could you please read and comment on http://userbase.kde.org/Talk:Kontact_Mobile#Rename_page_to_Kontact_Touch._684

Thanks

annew

http://userbase.kde.org/User_talk:Zinchenko

Zinchenko has the idea that by using .svg files from Inkscape it should be possible to make them language agnostic, so that translators could simply add applicable texts to the image. I have no idea whether this would work, or even whether it would be less work than creating a new screenshot. Would you mind talking to him about this? Thanks.

(By the way - have you noticed that it is now possible to translate the page title within the normal translation system?)

annew

1) It works. At least for this file we have SVG-version which makes localization very easy. SVG can also be very helpful to keep uniform look and feel between the translated pages.

2) Yes, thanks.

Yurchor

This is the only remaining link to "General KDE Problems" - which is now just a re-direct. Am I safe in assuming that this is an obsolete page that can be deleted? All the information that was on that page and is still relevant has been moved onto other pages.

annew

Yes.

Yurchor

I have plastered warnings all over about not touching the tags, but still people edit without reading them :-( Thanks for rescuing things after this edit. I wish there was some way of making the tags untouchable, but I can't think of anything.

annew

Plasma/FAQ is a redirect which always points to the latest version, so it's best not to use the link with the version number.

annew

Sure. So, what to do if user is on 4.4 (4.3, 4.5 soon (hey, Plasma developers, where are you?), etc.) and wants to be instructed how to add a widget on his panel? ;)

Yurchor

On every Plasma/FAQ/whatever page there is an info box directing to the earlier versions :-)

annew

Not really... :-)

Yurchor

Yes, really. 4.4 says For older versions you can turn to the KDE 4.3 specific page, theKDE 4.2 specific page, the KDE 4.1 specific page or the KDE 4.0 one

4.3 says For older versions you can turn to the KDE 4.2 specific page, KDE 4.1 specific page or the KDE 4.0 one

and so on. And they are all links.

annew

The only page with these links is Plasma/FAQ. Aliasing of Plasma/FAQ with Plasma/FAQ/4.4 (4.3, 4.5, etc.) breaks all links on the translated versions (via Special:myLanguage). Subpages, like Plasma/FAQ/4.4/Configuration, have no aliases at all.

What is the solution for linking if we not use "/4.x/" in links? ;)

Yurchor

I'm not sure that I'm understanding the problem but while looking at it, I did note that the Plasma/FAQ/4.4 (which is what the user is actually reading) didn't have Special:myLanguage at all, so I've fixed that.

Plasma/FAQ itself only contains the redirect to the latest version, and the redirect has to be changed when a new version is made. Apart from that, all the links have /4.x in them. I would have thought that between that and the myLanguage thing it would work. If it doesn't, can you explain a bit more about what actually happens? Thanks

annew

Consider the following examples: 1. Plasma/FAQ#How does Plasma work? links to the English page.

Special:MyLanguage/Plasma/FAQ#How does Plasma work? in any locale you will also be linked to the English page (broken localized links).

2. Plasma/FAQ/4.4/Configuration is valid page that can be linked, e.g. Plasma/FAQ/4.4/Configuration#Can_I_move_the_applets_on_the_panel.3F

On the other hand

Plasma/FAQ/Configuration#Can_I_move_the_applets_on_the_panel.3F points to nowhere (broken subpages).

:'(

Yurchor

Plasma/FAQ has only one purpose - to direct anyone searching to the latest version. It doesn't have any content, any sections, any subpages, so I'm surprised that even your first example works. I wouldn't have expected any links to be formulated against Plasma/FAQ at all - but against the versioned links (after all, the reader doesn't actually see that part of the link anyway). Now at last I understand where we started from :-) Yes, you are correct, I made a mistake there. Sorry about that, but I really did need to understand what you were pointing out.

annew

I did not do the original markup and I'd never looked at these pages. It looks as though they were done at the time that Siebrand thought we should tie down the translation to the nth degree. I've edited Amarok/QuickStartGuide, which should fix both your problem with images and my problem with section editing not working. Please let me know asap if it's now OK - if so I'll carry on with the others. If you want any other changes, I can do those at the same time.

annew

Yurchor

Some pages have a chatty style that is difficult to mark up. Sometimes I am marking features as menuchoices, when they are not exactly so. I don't know whether this is the best approach, or not, so I'd appreciate advice. Examples of such are the KOffice pages, KWord, KSpread, KPresenter etc..

annew

imho, these pages are by no means documentation, rather advertisement pages. Hence, there is no sense to use the same markup. Much more easily to use common wiki markup (quotes for emphasis, bold, etc.) for these pages.

Yurchor

OK, I'll go through the KOffice pages and change those. If you meet similar inappropriate stuff, please change them and accept my apologies for the extra work.

Your description "rather advertisement pages" is, of course, exactly what they were in the first place, when UserBase was conceived as a showcase for apps, rather than as a place for documentation.

annew

A discussion which started from the same place: Talk:Translation_Workflow#Use_of_menuchoice_tag_421. I'd like your input, please.

annew

We are close to moving UserBase to the new Chihuahua theme. There are some big advantages with Chihuahua, not the least being the ability to adapt to screen space, both large screens and small, hand-held ones. Much of the work I've been doing lately has been to prepare pages for the switch. As always, with something new, there are likely to be issues that we are not aware of until it is in more general use, so I'm approaching all who have made significant contribution in the last seven days, asking for help.

I'd like you to change your User Preferences to use Chihuahua, as soon as possible. The plan at the moment is that if at the end of this week we have no show-stopper issues we will make Chihuahua the default theme for UserBase, probably next weekend.

There is a public Etherpad at http://webteam.notes.kde.jefferai.org/14? - please add any notes, comments, issues there. It's also helpful if you say "Hi" in the chat window, because that ties a comment colour to your name, so I know who to approach if more discussion is needed.

Thanks for the help.

annew

Siebrand fixed markup on Applications/ and similar catalogue pages. They are now correct, but have caused a lot of work. I think it's avoidable, and doesn't pay off enough. Could you please join the discussion on http://userbase.kde.org/Talk:Translation_Workflow where I'm just about to add my reasoning. Your perspective would be valuable.

annew

Julia Vladimirov, username Julia, has asked to be added to Translators to help with Russian translation. I've added her to the group and asked her to contact you. --annew 14:33, 28 June 2010 (CEST)

annew