Wiki navigation / translation

[Yinameah]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to FreeCAD, and i'm so pleased to see the nice efforts being made here with that project. Really well done interface, workflow seem nice, modularity open such wide perspective...
I'm no professional designer nor hardcore coder, but I will spend some time on it, maybe try to help in some way.

Meanwhile, I have noticed something stange with the wiki. I speak french and I saw the wiki is well translated in my langage, but I found no simple way to navigate. For exemple, I'm on the page http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... Axis_Robot, I change to French, and only the word "Summary" is traducted, even though the french page exists here : http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... s_Robot/fr.

It's really a pity because if you don't discover the trick you may think there is no traduction. And as the work as been done...
I don't know if it's a bug or maybe I missed something.
If some correction to the wiki are needed to make thing work, I would be pleased to offer my help.

[rockn]

Hi Yinameah, et Bonjour et bienvenu ! I'm a french speaking user too
Indeed, navigating on the wiki in full French is pretty complicate.
When you say : "I changed to French" I think you are talking about the button at the top of the page. But this button affect, in fact, only your prefered langage for the "interface" of the wiki not the content.
To navigate in "French wiki" you have to scroll down the page and click on the little green square after "Français". After that, normally, if we have well translated the page, almost all links in the wiki page are pointing on translated page. If you keep the cursor on the square, you can also notice the percent translated.

I have bookmark this page : http://freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?ti ... elp_Toc/fr and normally, starting from this page make that I can navigate in the "french wiki".

Now when you notice error or non translated page you are very welcome to contribute !

[Yinameah]

Okay, thank you for the fast answer. So no bug, just unnecessarily complicated navigation pattern...

To be clear, if one want to use the left menu links in "other-than-english-langage", he has to scroll all the way down to change the language each time he load a page.... Not very user friendly. Actually, now I've understood the structure of the wiki, I think he should automatically do it ! Since all you have to do is add "/fr" to the url if the page exists AND the wiki retain the information of the langage you choose on the top for the interface ....

Anyway, it is no big deal once you know the trick, but it is very confusing and even discouraging when you first arrive, because it let you under the impression that everything is messy !!! (while it is not.) That would be a very nice fix for newcomers.

And I did not find yet a possibility to register myself to the wiki. And in the translation module, when I click on "Ask the permission (to translate)", I'm sent nowhere : http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... Translator. If you show me to right procedure, I would be more than happy to correct/translate a few things I've already noticed.

[rockn]

Yep, but we are not Wiki dev
And when you become a wiki user and discover the translation system, I am sure the wiki system gain some points in your consideration
To ask for wiki rights, just read the first subject in the wiki section of the forum and do what it's asking.

And for the left panel we are aware, but it seem hard to change that...

Perhaps we have to explain better that non-english speakers should not use the left panel.... ?

[yorik]

Actually the left menu CAN be translated. The first items (getting started, tutorials, etc...) are already translatable. For the rest, we were still discussing, some time ago, what to do, if we shouldn't simply remove it all, etc... So I didn't do anything with them yet.

[Yinameah]

Please rest assured that I have nothing but consideration for the wiki system.

It's what I thought; some configuration/organisation choices problem. No big deal, I just wanted to share my feeling, knowing that once you get used to something, there is some flaw you just forget. In my opinion, the wiki would have a lot to win by being a little bit more coherent at this level. Just saying...

For the wiki rights, I'm sorry, I didn't saw the first post. I send some private messages just now. Maybe a link to that topic should be present in the wiki to avoid that dead link I mentioned above ?

[NormandC]

I've been wondering if we shouldn't place the </language> tag at the top of the pages rather than at the bottom. Some wikis do it that way, see for example http://reprap.org/

But it would be a massive job to update all the existing pages...

[renatorivo]

I've been wondering if we shouldn't place the </language> tag at the top of the pages rather than at the bottom.

in the past, I have tried to do this on the page
http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... art_Sphere

I think it would be better, but the appearance is not very nice.
renato

[Yinameah]

Okay, so I have now the wiki permission, and I took some time with it :

1) The translation module seem still a little obscure to me. I try to change the french title for the "user hub", "power user hub", and "developer hub" pages, because there were translated in three different ways. It seem to work, but the original page doesn't move. Is there some validation needed ?

2)

I've been wondering if we shouldn't place the </language> tag at the top of the pages rather than at the bottom.

Much more practical, but indeed, the appearance is bad. As it is already done that way, the better thing to do is maybe to let it that way, but to explain it somewhere in the start page. Why not something like that :


3) I have now understood the organisation of the wiki and why the left menu is that way. Since this 3 "hubs" are one of the two possible entrance in the wiki, it make sense to have them there. But the confusion comes from the fact that when you switch to french with the top menu, the left one is translated (half way), but it doesn't target the right pages. If there is no simple way to translate this items AND make them target the right pages, I think it would be better to make them stay in english when you change configuration language. The current thing is really confusing at first glance, and really make bad publicity.

I hope I don't stress anybody with my big propositions since I'm new here, I just want to take advantage of my fresh motivation.

Have a nice evening.

[Yinameah]

Aha, I crack the case for the translation module. There was some open brackets in the content I was trying to edit. Removing them resolved all. The hub pages are now updated as well. Sorry for the panic


Any opinion for my main page idea ?

Best Regards