What does Serendipity need help with?

[chickens]

I've been in the forums on and off for a while now and I've seen a few posts saying that there are several things that need to be done. Now that I've got a bit of time I can't figure out what should be worked on.

Personally I am not a programmer nor designer, so I am looking to see if any documentation type stuff needs to be done. If there is anything that you guys would like to see done but just have not had the time or patience to do post it.

I think this will be a great post for anyone who is new and interested in helping out.

If there is already a post of this sort in the German forum, a translation would be great for those of us who only speak English.

[Don Chambers]

I do not know about anyone else, but my personal contributions have arisen out of my own personal need or desire to do something either differently than it is currently performed, or wanting something that does not exist. In other words, it has been driven personally. If you identify something like that for yourself - float the idea past the community, and if it seems like a good idea, prepare to roll your sleeves up and get to work!!!

[Zirbelholz]

I am just trying to use Serendipity for the first time. I'm a German-English translator. When I try to read the Serendipity materials, I have the feeling I am reading something translated from the German, or maybe just written by German speakers, and parts of it may be correct (I don't know all the terminology for this kind of thing) and other parts not.

Is that correct? You ask about translating messages from the German section. Does discussion start in German before English? And are there introductory materials in German? because I might find those easier to read.

For example, does this template / style / theme confusion arise from translation? I originally thought there were three things, but it seems they're all the same.

I'm reading about styles. It says 'Creating info.txt: Inside this file you can insert your credits, which are displayed in the s9y backend' - I gather backend means the pages linked through to. But what are 'credits'? Does it mean 'About me'? Credits sounds like a colophon, like the credits to a film.

And for 'entries.tpl' it refers to formatting 'your entry overview'. I don't know what an entry overview is - is it good English and I am ignorant, or does it mean something else? And what is 'where to show commentsforms etc.' - OK, commentsforms should be two words, but what is the relationship between them: is an 'and' missing, or does it mean 'forms for comments'?

This kind of thing is hard to follow, at least for me. Theoretically I could polish some of it up, but I don't know the subject-matter so I wouldn't have the correct English terminology.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant, but I think it's relevant to 'what needs doing'! Chickens writes real English so maybe he / she / they could help.

Margaret

[Don Chambers]

Welcome to the serendipity world Margaret. It is great to hear that you, like others, are expressing an interest to assist where you believe you are able to do so.

Serendipity has a very high percentage of German speaking users and developers. This likely explains many of your observations relative to translations.

I would not say that discussion starts in German and progresses to English. It usually begins as one or the other and remains that way for a given topic.... which is why the "general discussion" is divided between both German and English. Let us not forget something here though - there are vast differences in both languages WITHIN that given language!!

I initially shared your confusion with the very example you provided - themes/templates/styles. In s9y's administrative interface, the English link says "Manage Styles". The title to that page, once selected, says "Theme/Style Options", and the download section of this forum uses the term "Templates". They all mean the same thing, and I agree that it would be nice to see that revised at some point in the future. I do not know if this same multi-term useage exists in other languages, or if it merely English.

The info.txt file is purely for template designers. When you select "Manage Styles", you will see a list of available templates from which to select (tip: use the Spartacus plugin to see ALL templates on the remote repository, not just those shipped with s9y). Each template may show the template name, template author, date last revised, etc. That information is being read from the file info.txt, located in the same folder as the template itself.

I'm not entirely sure what your question is about the entries.tpl, so I am going to mostly skip that one.... however, the term "entry" means any of your actual blog entries, which are the primary content of your blog which may, or may not, have comments after it has been "published".

For commentform - in that case, it is a reference to, as you suggested, a form for submitting comments.... just so happens that the file that does this is commentform.tpl.

Like you, I am merely a user of serendipity, although I have made code and template contributions to serendipity. There is certainly an opportunity to remove a bit of confusion and ambiguity from s9y's code and documentation, especially for the benefit of first time users. I hope you continue to digest and learn s9y to the point where you could be in a position to assist. S9y's lead developer, Garvin Hicking, is the guy to work with.

[Zirbelholz]

Thanks for your reply, Don.

Unfortunately something seems to have gone wrong here. Last weekend, shortly after the forums were down as a result of the CPU failure, I tried to register, but without success. 24 hours later I tried again. Eventually two registrations came through, but I only validated one. Zirbelholz is the unvalidated one! I am also being helped by Garvin as MMarks.

I have been running a weblog under Movable Type for four years (old version). The reason I'm reading about Styles is because I want to change the template. I have seen all the available templates, and also imported one from somewhere else, but none of them are exactly what I want. I want to change some of the language too ('07 in the calendar to 2007, 'totaling X entries' to something else, I don't want US spelling).

Thanks very much for the tip on Spartacus. I had not got round to that yet. I am still in the process of wondering if Serendipity is the way to go. At the moment, the English is the only negative factor.

Regards
Margaret

[Zirbelholz]

No, I was wrong, Zirbelholz is the validated username, but I got emails to two different addresses. Sorry about that, forget it.

By the way, Don, you wrote that you aren't sure what my question is about the entries.tpl. I wasn't asking a question, I was illustrating what I don't understand. I expect I will work out most of it. But the point of the posting was to give some examples of my difficulty in understanding. If I were asking a question about one of those points, I would do it in another section.

Regards
Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Since Serendipity is an open source project, you're invited to correct the english spelling and contribute better documentation and/or rewrite existing language constants to better fit native english needs.

But to be honest, I don't think our english documentation is that bad, especially compared with other internationalized projects.

The confusion about Template/Style/Theme arises because the same term is used differently by each developer. In a project with many developers, the same people use different terms. I myself always preferred "Template", but other developers before me used "Style". So when I took on the project, I continued to use "Template" but did not unify its use and left "Style" where it was previously.

At the moment I'm writing a (german) book about Serendipity which fully documents everything there is about Serendipity. I'm eager to get this book translated to english, so maybe if my publisher agrees there'd be room for some cooperation with you.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Zirbelholz]

Thanks for the reply, Garvin.

I am British and I only translate into English, and I specialize in legal translation. You are thinking of getting the book translated to German, you say, but I think you mean English. Still, you really need a technical translator. Technical translators familiar with a subject area can choose the right technical terminology. They can also see where there are mistakes in the original, not that I expect there are mistakes in your original.

It may well be that the Serendipity English documentation is good, I just mention what strikes me. I don't want to tread on anyone's toes by altering things. I realize I notice language inconstencies more than many users would.

Regards
Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

True, I meant 'english' of course. I edited the original posting to reflect hat.

I was simply assuming you were writing in a technical direction, but simply because I forgot that you're writing a law blog - so I fully agree, I would need someone who's also up and running with technical issues required for the book.

I do suppose that the publisher will have his technical translators for the task, but having an actual serendipity-user would be nice, too, of course.

It may well be that the Serendipity English documentation is good, I just mention what strikes me. I don't want to tread on anyone's toes by altering things. I realize I notice language inconstencies more than many users would.

That's perfectly fine. One of the good things of being human is to be able to accept change - so if there's help who might want to improve documentation by killing off inconsistencies, that would be awesome. But this is really a huge task and can't be done in a matter of a few hours. As is always with good documentation, it usually takes more time to document software than to continue developing it.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Zirbelholz]

I would be happy to look over that book translation as an English reader, of course, if I'm using Serendipity - it would be useful for me too. I would be in a position to compare it with the German at points where it seemed odd. But then again, you are a native speaker of English yourself, aren't you?

I have seen a lot of books translated into English on law and I know the English consultants don't always notice everything. I taught translation and English for many years, so I'm used to noticing things.

Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I would be happy to look over that book translation as an English reader, of course, if I'm using Serendipity - it would be useful for me too. I would be in a position to compare it with the German at points where it seemed odd.

That sounds good! As it currently stands, the book first needs to come out in german before the english translation can start, mostly to check the commercial payoff possibilities for the publisher.

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But then again, you are a native speaker of English yourself, aren't you?

Sadly not, only a native german speaker here.

Hope you'll enjoy Serendipity so that we'll be able to benefit from your knowledge, input and feedback.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Don Chambers]

I want to change some of the language too ('07 in the calendar to 2007, 'totaling X entries' to something else, I don't want US spelling).

1) Changing the date format in the calendar.
The template that renders the calendar is plugin_calendar.tpl. If the theme/template/style you are using has customized this file, it will be located in your template folder (ie, /templates/mytemplate/). If not, your template will load the default, located at /templates/default/plugin_calendar.tpl. If your template DOES have this file, modify that one. If it does NOT have this file, copy it from the default folder to your template folder first, then modify it.

The formatting will appear on a line that looks, more or less, like this:

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<b><a style="white-space: nowrap" href="{$plugin_calendar_head.uri_month}">{$plugin_calendar_head.month_date|formatTime:"%B '%y":false}</a></b>

The piece you need to modify is nearly at the end, specifically this:

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%B '%y

%B means "full month name according to the current locale".
Then there is a space.
Then there is an apostrophe.
%y means "year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99)"

If, for instance you wanted to change "October '07" to "October 2007", you would merely delete the apostrophe and change %y to %Y (capital Y), which means "year as a decimal number including the century." For more information on the possible date/time variables, go here: http://php.net/strftime/.

2) "I want to change.... 'totaling X entries' to something else, I don't want US spelling"

This is the page footer, rendered by entries.tpl. However, the text "Page x of y totalling z entries" is a language constant - specifically the constant PAGE_BROWSE_ENTRIES, which in english is defined as: 'Page %s of %s, totaling %s entries'. The file containing this definition is in /lang/serendipity_lang_en.inc.php *AND* the utf-8 encoded version in /lang/utf-8/serendipity_lang_en.inc.php.

There is only a single English version - not different ones that reflect the subtle geographic differences in vocabulary and spelling (ie, "color vs. colour"). You can change anything in these language files to suit your particular preferences, but be warned that those files will be overwritten if/when you upgrade serendipity in the future.

[Zirbelholz]

Thanks for the extra information, Don. I missed this when it appeared.

Margaret

[Don Chambers]

Thanks for the extra information, Don. I missed this when it appeared.

Margaret

Better late than never! Hope the info is useful.