RE: Lua wiki content in other languages

["Nick Trout" <nick@...>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Belmonte [mailto:jvb@prairienet.org]
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 4:19 PM
> To: Lua list
> Subject: Re: Lua wiki content in other languages
> 
> Nick Trout wrote:
> >>Like most things, I think it's best to divide up the problem space
and
> >>be lazy.
> >
> > It may be more practical. I don't think I'd fancy the job of having
to
> > untangle 3 or 4 different languages if the wiki got to stage where
it
> > needed to be split.
> 
> Well, here is what I mean about dividing up the problem space and
being
> lazy.  My take is:
> 
>      Accept new content in other languages, but don't undertake a
> project to translate existing content.
> 
>      Avoid mixing languages on a single page.
> 
>      Don't accept content in a new language unless there is a plan to
> have a large-ish amount of content in that language.
> 
>      Don't make a new wiki that is specific to a certain language
unless
> the current wiki is overwhelmed with pages in that language.
> 
>      Stick to English for wiki page names.  I had an experience where
> Japanese wiki users were quite tolerant of such a limitation.

These sound like good rules. There are pros and cons for splitting other
language wikis off and keeping it on the same site. Splitting off would
allow the other language site to develop in its own way. If there are
different authors involved then they may consider a different
organisation - I'm not sure how different it may be.

I agree mixing languages on the same page would be a recipe for disaster
as large refactoring would become very difficult and time consuming. If
all names are in English how would you resolve clashes? Every name ends
in its language? E.g. LuaTutorial -> LuaTutorialPortuguese.

A feature which might help in the maintenance of cross language content
would be mailing changes to subscribed users. This is a feature than
Moin provides, so if someone did want to translate a certain item they
could subscribe to the page of the original content and make changes
when the wiki notified them. This would also be useful if you had an
interest in a particular page. Of course you can always looks at recent
changes but I doubt many people would do that daily and it's less of a
chore when you are told a page has changed.

> If we were going to hobble along with that, then all I'd need to do is
> change the HTML page encodings to utf-8.  However, Netscape 4 and
> similar browsers of that era, while they can display utf-8 pages,
cannot
>   handle utf-8 in a text box (required for page editing).  Those using
> old browsers, now is your chance to speak up...
> 
> Anyway, did I mention this is a slippery slope?

As slippery as Slippery McSlip the greased up eel. I agree with you that
unless significant content is generated for other languages it may be a
lot of hassle setting up the wiki and maintaining when it could just be
static content on lua-users.org. I don't remember any complaints about
the docs not being in any language other than English TBH, and noone has
added any none English content up until now when they have been free to
add whatever they want.

> (By the way Nick, why are your replies always to the parent of a
posting
> rather than the posting itself?)

I've no idea. I just hit reply, type and send. I (have to) use Outlook
at work so it may be that?

Nick

www. oc s arv ncou er.com