2008/6/11 Alessandro Falappa <alessandro@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
I added some examples for that. For Example look at http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/~medius/mediawiki/index.php/24_gimp-tool-rect-select/en#Rectangle_Selection at the top of the section you find a list of the languages the manual is available in. All the blue links mean that translation is available, the red ones point out missing translations. Klicking on a blue link brings you to the translation of just that piece of content.
Of course these links are not maintained manually, as you can see by looking into the source of that article. The whole language selection area is created by a template that is called as {{Language|<gimp versionversion>_<gimp help id>}}.
Thats a 100% percent valid concern! It has of course to be possible to create "something" that can be deployed in addition to the gimp app to provide offline help. The solution is to create a set of html pages from the wiki which provide the same content as the online version but without editing functionality of course. You can get a preview of such a static html page by clicking on the "print version" link in the tool bar on the left side.
media wiki provides some well maintained extensions to create a static html version of a whole wiki too - these can be used to create the "offline help" files.
Right now gimp calls the help by creating and opening an url that contains of some building blocks:
<base>/<language>/<gimp help id><.html>
Example 'file://user/me/here/is/the/gimp-help/html' / 'en' / 'gimp-tool-rect-select' '.html'
So, guess what, that mechanism also works for the wiki. Here we could have just on additional building block - the gimp version. It would look like:
<base> / <gimp version>_<gimp help id> / <language>
Example: 'http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/~medius/mediawiki/index.php' / '24' _ 'gimp-tool-rect-select' / 'en'
In addition to that you get something very cool: if you do not add a specific language, the wiki tries to determine the language of the user and automatically forwards to that language if it exists (so me beeing german forwards the wiki from http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tool-rect-select to http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tool-rect-select/de) If the page in the language of the user not exists, the wikis default language (usually english) is shown to the reader.
To get all this there is an abstraction layer build in. The content is written in articles named like the topic in each language:
for en: http://lexa [...] /Selection Tools
for de: http://lexa [...] /Auswahlwerkzeuge
in addition to that there are some forwarding rules (build into pages):
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection -> 'Selection Tools'
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection/en -> 'Selection Tools'
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection/de -> 'Auswahlwerkzeuge'
This way one gets articles that contain purely one language only (including the page title) bound to each other by the gimp-help-id that is also the link to the gimps context help. Even more, with this architecture you can manage the manual for more than one version in one wiki at a time. For gimp 2.6 we would just have to add 26_gimp-tools-selection.
Hope this makes it somewhat more clear. Feel free to ask further questions :)
Greetings, lexA
Axel,
your proposal is indeed original and tackles the problems from a
whole different point of view.
By looking at the Blender documentation example I acknowledge that there
are indeed a lot of advantages in the "wiki way" especially as far as
authoring and proofreading is concerned.
As Julien pointed out I haven't properly got how a translator can
actually translate a topic but from a user perspective I guess it would
end up having something like Wikipedia where in the side bar you have
"Other languages: English Deutsch ...". May be you coud add a sample
page in your proof of concept wiki where you show how it looks when you
make a topic available in more than one language?
I added some examples for that. For Example look at http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/~medius/mediawiki/index.php/24_gimp-tool-rect-select/en#Rectangle_Selection at the top of the section you find a list of the languages the manual is available in. All the blue links mean that translation is available, the red ones point out missing translations. Klicking on a blue link brings you to the translation of just that piece of content.
Of course these links are not maintained manually, as you can see by looking into the source of that article. The whole language selection area is created by a template that is called as {{Language|<gimp versionversion>_<gimp help id>}}.
Another big issue to think about is how to ship the manual in a packaged
form to let users install an offline copy of it alongside the GIMP
application. Is it possible? How do you think to solve this?
Thats a 100% percent valid concern! It has of course to be possible to create "something" that can be deployed in addition to the gimp app to provide offline help. The solution is to create a set of html pages from the wiki which provide the same content as the online version but without editing functionality of course. You can get a preview of such a static html page by clicking on the "print version" link in the tool bar on the left side.
media wiki provides some well maintained extensions to create a static html version of a whole wiki too - these can be used to create the "offline help" files.
Other issues:
What about the context sensitive help invocation mechanism?
What's the impact on GIMP code?
Right now gimp calls the help by creating and opening an url that contains of some building blocks:
<base>/<language>/<gimp help id><.html>
Example 'file://user/me/here/is/the/gimp-help/html' / 'en' / 'gimp-tool-rect-select' '.html'
So, guess what, that mechanism also works for the wiki. Here we could have just on additional building block - the gimp version. It would look like:
<base> / <gimp version>_<gimp help id> / <language>
Example: 'http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/~medius/mediawiki/index.php' / '24' _ 'gimp-tool-rect-select' / 'en'
In addition to that you get something very cool: if you do not add a specific language, the wiki tries to determine the language of the user and automatically forwards to that language if it exists (so me beeing german forwards the wiki from http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tool-rect-select to http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tool-rect-select/de) If the page in the language of the user not exists, the wikis default language (usually english) is shown to the reader.
To get all this there is an abstraction layer build in. The content is written in articles named like the topic in each language:
for en: http://lexa [...] /Selection Tools
for de: http://lexa [...] /Auswahlwerkzeuge
in addition to that there are some forwarding rules (build into pages):
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection -> 'Selection Tools'
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection/en -> 'Selection Tools'
http://lexa [...] /24_gimp-tools-selection/de -> 'Auswahlwerkzeuge'
This way one gets articles that contain purely one language only (including the page title) bound to each other by the gimp-help-id that is also the link to the gimps context help. Even more, with this architecture you can manage the manual for more than one version in one wiki at a time. For gimp 2.6 we would just have to add 26_gimp-tools-selection.
Hope this makes it somewhat more clear. Feel free to ask further questions :)
Greetings, lexA
Greets.
Axel Wernicke ha scritto:
> Hi List,
> ...
>> <http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/%7Emedius/mediawiki/index.php/Meta/Why_GIMP-Manual_as_wiki#Pro.27s_.26_Con.27s>
> I propose to wholeheartly and open minded discuss alternatives. Please
> have a look into
> http://lexaikon.dnsalias.org/~medius/mediawiki/index.php/Meta/Why_GIMP-Manual_as_wiki#Pro.27s_.26_Con.27s
> and let me know what you think about it.Alessandro Falappa
>
> Greetings, lexA
--
web: http://www.falappa.net/
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