Hello,
on Tuesday, I'll try to present SPIP to English speaking webmasters and try to convince them that it's the solution they are looking for.
SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people that do not speak French.
The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
Any idea?
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
I think there is no easy way to convince them. I'm new to SPIP, I like it very much, all user interface is translated to bulgarian (my native language) and this was one of the reasons to chose SPIP. This is the nice part 
The not-so-nice is when I looked more closely to templates and saw that everything is in French. This *surely* is very nice for french webmasters, but for the others is pain. I was ready to give up and to look for another solution, and still I'm not sure.
Solutions for me are two:
* strong community with some french speaking people, that is ready to help those that do not speak french, to translate docs to other languages, to give easy examples, etc. I think you have that, but anyway this is not the easy way, and you know it since you ask...
* since the number of keywords in templates is limited, and since all they follow some strict syntax, I think it is not very hard to be made some dictionary with pairs of keywords - in french and same keyword in English. After that an easy tool can be made, that takes template and this dictionary file and translates template to English or to any other language. Webmaster can then make changes in an native for him environment, then execute same tool again to translate changed template back to french, so it can be used by SPIP engine. This will work for every language (more or less), does not need any change to SPIP code itself and will make SPIP backend as international, as SPIP user interface.
There is one variant of this idea - to have some variabble "SPIP_Template_Language", defined per file, and depending of its value SPIP to convert template file to french before usage, store converted file somewhere in his cache and work with it. So there will be no processing and time overhead, just templates will be more understandable for not-french developers...
If you apply this idea to templates, you can run same tool for all SPIP documentation (if it is well formated and if it is visible what is SPIP code and what is text), so the examples can also be in native for readers language, and this way more understandable and easy to learn and apply.
With hope to help,
Danail
Pierre Andrews wrote:
Hello,
on Tuesday, I'll try to present SPIP to English speaking webmasters and try to convince them that it's the solution they are looking for.
SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people that do not speak French.
The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
Any idea?Pierre
_______________________________________________
spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
On Friday 19 January 2007 20:35, Pierre Andrews wrote:
SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing
resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people
that do not speak French.
The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them
that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
Any idea?
For me, French as template language is not the problem. It should not be hard
for anyone to learn those words (there isn't too much of them; and it will be
easier for me to start learning French one day 
). English documentation
is very good. It is not up-to-date with the newest SPIP version, but
webmasters should check the reference list at www.spip.net/@ regularly to see
what's been added since the last update of English docs.
A sort of a problem is the part of documentation which is not translated from
French (ie. plugins), but I'm using Babelfish to understand that.
One idea for the developers: a nice feature would be possibility to change
French names which are visible in the URLs. An example: I would like to
change www.mysite.com/ecrire to www.mysite.com/admin; or /?id_rubrique=22
to /?id_rubrika=22 (in Croatian) etc.
Marko
Hi Pierre,
I think there is no easy way to convince them. I'm new to SPIP, I like
it very much, all user interface is translated to bulgarian (my native
language) and this was one of the reasons to chose SPIP. This is the
nice part The not-so-nice is when I looked more closely to templates
and saw that everything is in French. This *surely* is very nice for
french webmasters, but for the others is pain. I was ready to give up
and to look for another solution, and still I'm not sure.
Solutions for me are two:
* strong community with some french speaking people, that is ready to
help those that do not speak french, to translate docs to other
languages, to give easy examples, etc. I think you have that, but anyway
this is not the easy way, and you know it since you ask...
* since the number of keywords in templates is limited, and since all
they follow some strict syntax, I think it is not very hard to be made
some dictionary with pairs of keywords - in french and same keyword in
English. After that an easy tool can be made, that takes template and
this dictionary file and translates template to English or to any other
language. Webmaster can then make changes in an native for him
environment, then execute same tool again to translate changed template
back to french, so it can be used by SPIP engine. This will work for
every language (more or less), does not need any change to SPIP code
itself and will make SPIP backend as international, as SPIP user interface.
There is one variant of this idea - to have some variabble
"SPIP_Template_Language", defined per file, and depending of its value
SPIP to convert template file to french before usage, store converted
file somewhere in his cache and work with it. So there will be no
processing and time overhead, just templates will be more understandable
for not-french developers...
If you apply this idea to templates, you can run same tool for all SPIP
documentation (if it is well formated and if it is visible what is SPIP
code and what is text), so the examples can also be in native for
readers language, and this way more understandable and easy to learn and
apply.
With hope to help,
Danail
Pierre Andrews wrote:
Hello,
on Tuesday, I'll try to present SPIP to English speaking webmasters and try to convince them that it's the solution they are looking for.
SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people that do not speak French.
The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
Any idea?Pierre
_______________________________________________
spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
Try to show them how many English sites are developed with SPIP!
Anyway I still think that the fact that SPIP's language is in French is not a problem. I suggest that we just improve the glossary with a translation of the actual words not just displaying the titles of the articles where they appear.We could also bundle this glossary with the SPIP distribution.
George
Pierre Andrews wrote:
Hello,
on Tuesday, I'll try to present SPIP to English speaking webmasters and try to convince them that it's the solution they are looking for.
SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people that do not speak French.
The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
Any idea?Pierre
2007/1/20, George Kandalaft <george@diwanalarab.com>:
not a problem. I suggest that we just improve the glossary with a
translation of the actual words not just displaying the titles of the
articles where they appear.We could also bundle this glossary with the
SPIP distribution.
Yes, the glossary with SPIP, that would be great !!
George
Pierre Andrews wrote:
> Hello,
>
> on Tuesday, I'll try to present SPIP to English speaking webmasters and
> try to convince them that it's the solution they are looking for.
>
> SPIP has great features, but the fact that most of the existing
> resources (contribs, plugins, etc...) is a bit frustrating for people
> that do not speak French.
> The second grey area is the template language. How can I convince them
> that the overhead of the SPIP language being french is worth it?
> Any idea?
>
> Pierre
>_______________________________________________
spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
Why should English keywords in templates be "better" than French or
let's say Croatian or Spanish keywords? None of these keywords are
self-explaining, and their specific use must be learned from the
documentation anyway.
Unless someone wants to develop a system where keywords can be used
interchangeably in any language, let's stick with what we have and
focus on decent translations of the documentation in all languages
required. I can hardly imagine that a multi-language keyword system
really warrants the effort.
Christian
Christian is right. What do we gain when we call a "boucle" a "loop"? I don't understand this discussion. The point is to learn how to build and use a boucle or a loop.
Apropos "decent translation" (of documents): Since the version 1.9, it should be possible to install several
sites on a unique spip kernel. It's explained in french at Un noyau SPIP 1.9, plusieurs sites ! - SPIP-Contrib. That article's language is beyond the scope of my french. Does anyone have a "decent translation"?
Barnie
On 2007 Jan 21, at 2:04, Christian Meyn wrote:
Why should English keywords in templates be "better" than French or
let's say Croatian or Spanish keywords? None of these keywords are
self-explaining, and their specific use must be learned from the
documentation anyway.Unless someone wants to develop a system where keywords can be used
interchangeably in any language, let's stick with what we have and
focus on decent translations of the documentation in all languages
required. I can hardly imagine that a multi-language keyword system
really warrants the effort.Christian
_______________________________________________
spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
2007/1/21, email@ingberlin.com <email@ingberlin.com>:
Christian is right. What do we gain when we call a "boucle" a "loop"?
I don't understand this discussion. The point is to learn how to
build and use a boucle or a loop.
An aspect that we must keep in mind is that in the documentations /
contribs / user explainations, all templates must be in the same
language (if we want to understand eachother). This isn't in
contradiction of designing by "loops", "keywords", etc.. the
corresponding elements "boucles", "mots", etc..
Apropos "decent translation" (of documents): Since the version 1.9,
it should be possible to install several
A lot of change has been made since the 1.9.1 version. That's right
that the documentation doesn't follow as speed as we would want..
sites on a unique spip kernel. It's explained in french at http://
www.spip-contrib.net/Un-noyau-SPIP-1-9-plusieurs-sites. That
article's language is beyond the scope of my french. Does anyone have
a "decent translation"?
Mmh.. This method will be outdated in next days : spip 1.9.2 is about
to come out, and it's structure has changed for the temporary files
(they aren't inside "ecrire" folder, but dispatched in several
easier-to-understand folders : "/config", "/tmp" and "/local").
But I have to work on the kernel sharing in the next two days, so I
promize I'll make a translation of the contrib (and eventually update
it).
Generally speaking, if you find a contribution usefull that hasn't
been translated yet, I invite you to start a translation of this
article in the private area of spip-contrib (just open an account by
completing the form "Personal identifiers" at the home page of
spip-contrib). This can help a lot of people !
.Gilles
--
Barnie
On 2007 Jan 21, at 2:04, Christian Meyn wrote:
> Why should English keywords in templates be "better" than French or
> let's say Croatian or Spanish keywords? None of these keywords are
> self-explaining, and their specific use must be learned from the
> documentation anyway.
>
> Unless someone wants to develop a system where keywords can be used
> interchangeably in any language, let's stick with what we have and
> focus on decent translations of the documentation in all languages
> required. I can hardly imagine that a multi-language keyword system
> really warrants the effort.
>
> Christian
> _______________________________________________
> spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en_______________________________________________
spip-en@rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
Christian Meyn wrote:
Why should English keywords in templates be "better" than French or
let's say Croatian or Spanish keywords? None of these keywords are
self-explaining, and their specific use must be learned from the
documentation anyway.
Well, that was not the discussion that I started
I agree that for non french, non english mother tongue developers, using loop or boucle is exactly the same thing.
However (living here, I can't tell you that), British and other english speaking developers have a lot of choice _in there mother tongue_. So even if it's only keywords and not plain english, using FOR/LOOP instead of BOUCLE is more natural to them. Calling a keyword a keyword and not a mots is easier to them.
So, as they have plenty of other systems available to them, they need more to be convinced that spip is good for them...
I don't think SPIP has to change it's language just to please them, but you still have to go a bit further to convince them.
For my original question, I think I convinced them in the way that they said: "well, you'll take care of the technical part of the site", so they didn't really ask details
It's probably using deception, but then they'll see it's great and worth it 
Pierre
Hello,
using FOR/LOOP instead of BOUCLE is more natural to them. Calling a keyword a keyword and not a mots is easier to them.
In any programming language a loop is a LOOP. So any programmer is more confortable with LOOP than BOUCLE
But I don't think it's a solution to have a template langage per language
It's a fact that nobody (outside of France) knows SPIP - the standard template is ugly und the test installation on www.opensourcecms.com was never appealing. Efforts could be done in this directon. People have indeed a big choice of other open source CMS.
regards
Patrick
P.S.
I'm new to the english spip list.
I'm a programmer from Switzerland. I use SPIP since 2003 and I apreciate it as a very flexible and stable system (and easy to use for the end user).