On 23 August 2013 21:11, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 12:21 PM, janI <j...@apache.org> wrote: > > On 23 August 2013 17:58, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: > > > >> (Responses to d...@openoffice.apache.org, please) > >> > >> Obviously our website is quite large. Google reports 21207 pages > >> indexed in the www subdomain, and a further 48075 pages in the wiki > >> subdomain. But for purpose of this post, when I talk about the "home > >> page" I'm talking about the contents of our main index.html and the > >> most commonly visited pages directly linked to it, e.g., the > >> why/download/product/get-involved, etc. pages. > >> > >> This core homepage content amounts to around 25 pages. > >> > >> Today this content is scattered around the content tree. Some of it > >> is in the root. Some of it in /why and /download directories. Some > >> of it is template-related and is in /templates rather than in > >> /content. > >> > >> As a test I tried to create my own NL page, in the fictitious "xx" > >> locale. You can see it here: http://www.openoffice.org/xx/ > >> > >> It is not working correctly, but it already required a lot of > >> non-trivial hacking: > >> > >> 1) I had to hunt around and guess which files to copy. Do I copy > >> scripts, images and CSS, or just content pages? Some of the > >> directories had out-dated content that was not linked to my anyone. > >> It was hard to figure out what the minimum amount of content needed > >> was, and where it was located. > >> > >> 2) The main index.html file had to be edited to refer to CSS in the > >> root, rather than current directory > >> > >> 3) Download page is missed up, missing CSS and/or scripts. > >> Presumably I need to copy something into the xx/download dir, or edit > >> scripts to make them refer /download off the root. > >> > >> 4) The /xx/why pages are not showing the right side navigation now. I > >> must have missed something there as well. > >> > >> Of course, I could figure the above out eventually. It just requires > >> some time and effort and trial and error. But none of this is > >> documented, and even if it were this is a fragile approach and > >> probably beyond th web development skills of a typical translator. > >> > >> But we do know this has been done for some languages. They got it to > >> work. The German page is a good example: > >> > >> http://www.openoffice.org/de/ > >> > >> Now this looks good, but it is still a messy thing from a maintenance > >> perspective. If we make structural changes to the main English page, > >> then those changes need to be manually merged into to every NL page. > >> > >> What can we do to improve this? > >> > >> Here's my idea: > >> > >> 1) What if we refactored the home page so it was all self-contained > >> into these directories: /scripts, /styles, /images and /en/? > >> > >> 2) Make the /en directory be pure content. Only the stuff that needs > >> to be translated. It loads everything else, scripts, images, etc., > >> via URLs relative to the root, e.g.., in /scripts, /styles, etc. > >> > >> 3) Reduce or eliminate any embedded Javascript within pages. For > >> example, refactor the code in download/index.html so it is external > >> and depends on JSON resource files for translated strings. Aim so > >> translators never need to touch script. > >> > >> 4) Ultimate goal is for someone to be able to jump start a new NL home > >> page by simply requesting an svn copy of the /en directory, and then > >> editing the resulting files. No one should ever need to do what I'm > >> doing with the "xx" pages. > >> > >> 5) Maintenance is far easier. Most things like changing the scripts, > >> is done in one place only. But even changes to the HTML are easier. > >> Since we then have a common branch point via the svn copy, when > >> structural changes are added to the main /en HTML, these can be merged > >> in more elegantly to the translated versions, using Subversion. > >> > >> 6) Via Apache redirects we can ensure that the default call to > >> www.openoffice.org/ goes to /en/. Conceivably we could also do locale > >> detection and send requests automatically to the appropriate NL home > >> page. > >> > >> A variation on the above would be to use Pootle, rather than svn > >> copy/merge to maintain the translations. But that would require the > >> same refactoring work to enable it. And it would require further > >> investigation to identify a way of extracting and merging translation > >> strings in MDText files as well as (X)HTML files. > >> > >> This is obviously more than a one-person task. So I'd be interested > >> in hearing what you think in general about this approach, whether > >> there is a simpler alternative I've missed, and whether this is > >> something you'd be interested in helping with. > >> > > > > I like a lot of your ideas, let me add my own experience. > > > > Thanks. > > > If the our pages do not contain text, but that is totally outsourced in > one > > or more json objects, then translation becomes easy, and the pages > themself > > stay simple. when the url is called without arguments the "en-json" is > > used, and if called with lang="xx" "xx-json" is used. > > > > I like the idea of content/code separation. We certainly do this is > the code, for example. But two challenges to taking this approach all > the way with the website. > > 1) If we do JSON everywhere then we have a Javscript dependency > everywhere. This has an impact for visibility of the pages to search > engines, but there are workarounds. But it may be a bigger issue for > users who block Javascript. > > No we would do that solely on the server side, it would not be a good idea to have JS retrieve the json objects.
We could eg. use php, that retrieved to correct json object, and transmitted a finished page. > 2) There may be cases where a translation requires direct access to > the HTML or CSS. For example, I think the Tamil translation needed > access to specify a specific font. And for some languages they might > need to set text direction to RTL. These kinds of things make almost > any approach more complicated. > Look at e.g. our mwiki that handles those details all on server side. And just as a suggestion, if we were to use wordpress, things like fonts would be solved. WP also have a possibility (not json) for multi language, which I could easy adopt in genLang (for translation). > > So the question we need to answer is how far we take this? I think > we have some examples where the code is so intertwined with the text > that translation becomes very hard and risky. For example, the > generation of the "boxes" on the download page. But then we have > some other pages, especially the MDText pages, where I would be > comfortable handing it directly to a translator and expect they could > edit it without breaking anything. > We can always find examples where it becomes hard, but typically you can reformulate the problem so it fits in a standard (boxes are no real problem). The only problem I see is with JS, where are ask and get answers e.g. YN. > > The Javascript dependency might be broken if we make this be a CMS > build-time text replacement rather than a runtime/Javascript > replacement. So the CMS would detect when the Pootle files change and > automatically generate new HTML pages from them. But even then we > still would need some runtime integration of strings, specifically on > the download page where language and OS are determined at runtime > based on browser request headers. > I would consider not to use cms, because we basically dont need it. rgds jan I. > > -Rob > > > If we use json objects, then pootle becomes an elegant tool for > > translation, because it knows how to handle xml, and if we want to stay > > with po files its about 1 day work in genLang. > > > > A number of top companies (incl. the one I used to work for) do it like > > this, they of course then hire a translator to translate the json > objects. > > > > Splitting functionality and text is the key, when thats done the rest is > > trvial work. > > > > This will of course make cms a bit top kill, but I can live with that :-) > > > > > > > > rgds > > jan I. > > > > > >> > >> Regards, > >> > >> -Rob > >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > >> > >> > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > >
