ucapps.de Multilingual support

MIDIbox Documentation Project
1

Due to a lot of requests in the last years, my website is now prepared for a proper and easy to handle multilingual support.

The translations have to be provided (and especially maintained) by the community, the only support I can give is:

Before this topic drifts into the wrong direction:

  • I won’t switch to a content management system, since the flow I’m currently using is optimized for my own reqirements, any change in this flow could mean that I need twice or thrice the time to write or change a webpage, and I guess that you don’t really want this
  • I won’t change the general layout, because I like how it is. If you want to create something which looks different, then you could put this stuff to midibox.org, but without support from my side
  • I cannot give you that much hints about how to edit and preview the source files under Windows - such tips have to provided by experienced windows users who tried this
  • I will only give direct ftp access to people who I know since a long time. New additions or updates have to be sent to me via email. Later we could maybe find a voluntary who maintains the file uploads to reduce my own effort.
  • please only send me the .html.gen files, I don’t need the other stuff which is already on the server or which will be generated automatically
  • I won’t make all .html and .html.gen files available in a downloadable .zip, due to traffic costs, and due to the high danger that people are editing on expired files

Moxi has already started to create some french translations, they are a good example about how the multilingual support looks like:

http://www.ucapps.de/howto_debug_midi_fr.html

http://www.ucapps.de/howto_tools_mpasm_fr.html

http://www.ucapps.de/howto_tools_mplab_fr.html

http://www.ucapps.de/howto_tools_mbsyx_fr.html

http://www.ucapps.de/howto_tools_syxloader_18f_fr.html

http://www.ucapps.de/floorboard_fr.html

There are also some very old pages from my which I initialy wrote in german, e.g.:

http://www.ucapps.de/midimon_de.html

http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_de.html

http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_tutorial_de.html

How to create a new translation: it’s easy so long you don’t use a GUI (e.g. a .html editor) but a common text editor.

  • (always) download the most recent page source from my website, the filename is always the page name + .gen, example: the source code of http://www.ucapps.de/mios.html is located at http://www.ucapps.de/gen/mios.html.gen
  • do the real work: translate the texts
  • send me the new file(s), I will “push the button” (in other words: I will start a script) which generates the .html files and which is doing all the required changes to link the new translated version to the other pages with the same content
  • please check for updates at http://www.ucapps.de/ucapps_changelog.html and http://www.ucapps.de/gen/index.php?dir=&sort=date&order=desc from time to time and send me your changes
  • I don’t prevent you to find and correct typing/grammar errors in the original files, or from improving some descriptions - but please only send me updates of files which are not older than 1 day

Tip: if your webbrowser doesn’t allow to download a .gen file, then you can either try another browser (e.g. firefox), or you can use a program like “wget” to download the file directly — the usage of wget is very easy, just write (e.g.) "wget http://www.ucapps.de/gen/mios.html.gen"

Tip2: under windows you can use “wordpad”, “cooledit”, “emacs” or any other advanced editor to make your changes. Notepad is not sufficient, since it doesn’t support the unix-style linebreaks

The use of a HTML editor to edit the files is possibly less efficient, therefore I won’t give any tips here.

For checking the page layout of your edited page, all images which are referenced must be located at your harddisk. With firefox (or similar) you can display they content of the .gen page directly, there is no need to generate the final .html file before. If somebody has some tips, how to download the images automatically, then write them down here.

But please keep in mind: grapping the entire ucapps.de homepage produces a lot of traffic and could increase my costs, therefore please try to work without such preview capabilities. I think that they are not really required.

I’ve started new topics in the multilingual sections so that arrangements can be made with interested people in of your country.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

P.S.: if you are missing some pages in the navigation bar at the left side of ucapps.de, just press the “refresh” button

2

A great idea Thorsten!

Since i made technical translations in IT business for big american companies as a freelancer for a living before my actual daytime job (which includes 80% technical documentation) i would be happy to contribute to the german part (should be easy…did it the other way round in the past only…)

do you have any suggestions for some kind of style guide or should we take it a little less complicate (means: you just lectorate on the fly / at least for the german part…)?

I don’t really think it’s a problem since the original docs are very clearly structured, very topic concentrated and easy to understand…just wanted to ask.

Greets

Martin

3

Hi Martin,

your help is welcome! :slight_smile:

Style guide: the easiest solution would be when only the texts are translated. If you want to add more descriptions, more pictures, more examples, then this should be done in the original page as well to avoid inconsitencies on changes.

I already wrote it to Moxi, but it’s possible for general interest. Here some things which will be changed in the next weeks:

  • all MBHP pages will get some hints and pictures about bypass caps
  • the MBHP_MF page will be completely rewritten
  • the MIOS Bootstrap page will be partly overworked due to the new upload tool (MIOS Studio)
  • hints about MIOS Studio will also be added to the “MPASM” and “MPLAB” page, and to the troubleshooting page

Best Regards, Thorsten.

4

Hi Thorsten,

first page translated, look your mail…

I hope it’s the way you like it, mail me otherwise for general changes before i continue work on the next pages…  :wink:

Greets

Martin

(PS: with style guide i meant the kind of  “speech” we want the german translation to have, but your hints have been useful anyway… i orientated loosely on the korg and roland manuals for the fixed expressions…to keep it modern but precise…and hope it hits your point of meaning.)

Edited: Thanks for mail, second one already up in your box…time to go to bed…

5

Hello TK!

This one is a great ideia and i want to help. I’m able to translate to portuguese, but i’m having some problems…

question 1: i downloaded the .html.gen file to my hd, and then opened with wordpad. i’m getting a lot of tags (like html). Is this normal?

question 2: i’ve already translated part of the mios, but i’ve done it with notepad, (i didnt look carefully tyo your post, sorry ;o). is there a way to use this translated text to make the new page?

Thanks and thanks!

Best regards

heitor

6

Hi Heitor,

thanks for your interest. :slight_smile:

It is very important that you are working exactly on the current flow, otherwise you will produce a lot of additional effort at my side (please don’t! :-/)

Moxi: could you explain how you edit the pages in the meantime?

Best Regards, Thorsten.

7

hi ,

there is my workflow:

-to download a page ,first i go on the Ucapps main page, then, in the navigation bar on the left, i do a right click on the link to the page to translate and choose “save target as…”

-so, you will have on your PC a file called e.g. :"mbhp_aout.html . you need to configure your web browser to dowload page without pictures and attached files (like zip…),  to save space on your HD and to minimise the datas transfers on the Ucapps server.

-To edit the page ,i found a freeware called “NVU”, it’s a htlm editor:

http://www.nvu.com/download.html

-I open it in NVU, and do the translation on the htlm file (i find this way more easy, and more clear than a simple text page).

  • I save the file one time the translation is finished, and then open the saved file with “notepad”

  • I remove all things before “HEADER 3 name of the page” and the  arrow just after : “–>”

  • at the end of the file, I remove all things after “FOOTER” and the arrow just before :"<!-- "

  • I save the file

  • To finish, i rename it to e.g. “mbhp_aout_fr.html.gen” , the “fr” stand for “french”, replace this letter depending of the langage you translate the page to. you will get an advise of windows saying something like “do you really want to change the file extension” reply yes.

(i don’t use worpad cause it always save the page to a text format ,and do change in the paging)

-Send the file to Thorsten.

Always download one page at once ,and finish the translation before downloading another one ,because T.K. does change in the site very often.

And be really carefully if you use online translator, most of the time they don’t know “technical” vocabulary, (i prefer my “real” Collins dictionnary) ,and go to electronique site in your langage to see how are called things that are specifics.Sometime there is words that are more clear if you keep them in english.

Heitor,( and other) PM me your mail so i will send you some “exemple” pages.

8

Nice tips and explanation!

TK, dont worry, you dont have to worry about more work, i’m not going to give you ;o)

Moxi, thanks for the excellent tutorial, i shall follow it. If i need more help i’ll PM you :o)

Best Regards, and standby for a portuguese version  ;D