Hi Victor,

thanks for getting into this, and learning about all of this!

Am 09.04.2017 um 01:07 schrieb Victor Westmann:
> Hi Sylvain,
>
> I just did a simple change of language on the latest (0.92.1) Inkscape
> app and, even though it's impressive the application supports so many
> different languages, it needs to be restarted to do so. Which would
> make the work of a single person capturing the same Inkscape window in
> a lot of different languages longer and a little bit tedious.
>
> I went to Edit > Preferences (or Ctrl  + Shift + P) > Interface >
> Selected my language of choice...
>
> I have no idea of how much engineering it would demand -- and if this
> is even possible -- but I believe that for one single person to
> capture the same screenshot -- for our manual and documentation
> purposes -- multiple times(for the different languages) it would be
> better if it could change language of the UI without restarting the
> application and if we could do so using a few keyboard shortcuts.
> Maybe I'm asking too much here.
>

- Each translator could do his/her own screenshots, so that would spread
the work out. Translation is important, but I'd say that it's not the
primary focus. It would be more important to me to get an up-to-date
documentation in English first. If really needed, there would be ways to
automate the process (but I'm not sure that's necessary). I don't expect
we'd have more than 3 or 4 manual translation languages in the near to
far future (of course, more is nice :) ).

> Since the Inkscape already has a great number of languages but it
> needs to be restarted to show them, maybe we would need to define a
> standard Operating System (at least in the case of Windows and macOS
> machines) for consistency.
>
> This seems far more complicated than I have anticipated before. I
> believe that having, initially, the images in English would be ideal.
>
> Another challenge that came to my mind is: IF we happen to make a new
> official documentation manual for the Inkscape online (more or less on
> the "Read the docs" style) how would we make it?
>
> Two options here:
>
> 1. Would we change the entire manual for each major Inkscape release?
> (0.93.x, 0.94.x...)
> 2. Or would we keep the old manuial (as long as the features described
> in it are the same) and only append a section like: NEW FEATURES IN
> VERSION 0.93 and make it incremental? (I like this approach better)
>

- I would choose neither. I'm hoping we can leverage version control for
this, and a system that supports this by using tags on a version, or by
using separate branches. Else we'd make one manual for every major
release, each based upon the previous one. So, incremental: yes.
Appendix: no. But this would mean that no changes could be made to
previous manual versions... That would require branches, one for each
version.

I think Tav made his manual kind of 'universal', by adding the version
numbers right into the text. That's fine for a limited set of versions,
or maybe for sub-versions, but I find it gets confusing when there are
major changes.

If the version control / branches / tagging / backporting thing doesn't
work (as would probably be the case with flossmanuals), I'd go with
separate manuals. We can only ship (i.e. include with Inkscape) one per
version anyway.

> Getting the screenshots and making a lot of numbers inside circles and
> then pointing them out would be a long work, even longer if we
> consider a way to include all the multiple languages.
>

- The files could be prepared as SVG, then you'd only need to exchange
the screenshot within it. In most cases, numbering items on the
screenshot won't be needed, though, I think.

> Another challenge (just brainstorming here, I don't want to get anyone
> upset, just trying to anticipate problems before they happen so we can
> solve and overcome them) what if we change to a different language
> (let's say mine PT_BR) and the strings weren't translated correctly or
> are in English?

- Then the user will be happy that at least there is a partial
translation :-) That's better than nothing. But really we'd only need to
include languages where there was a translator working on it.

>
> This makes me go back to the approach of trying to get the images in
> plain EN English idiom. We would change everything else (text). This
> way the manual would be produced faster and quicker. And we could get
> more volunteers to collaborate in it.
>
> I believe we also strongly need a DEV documentation as well because we
> get a lot of emails on the others lists asking how to compile Inkscape
> on X platform. :-)
>
> Thoughts anyone?
>

- Dev documentation is supposed to become included in the Inkscape
source code repository (at least that seems to be the favourite location
for it for developers). For that one, some automated way of document
generation from comments in the code, plus files that can live in the
repo itself would be mandatory. Currently, that documentation can be
found in the Wiki (and on the Jenkins server... at least an outdated
version of it).

On another note, if the Hackfest will take place in Paris, then Elisa
and Cédric will probably also take a shot at the manual issue. It would
be so cool if we could get started soon :)

Btw. I always thought that the 'Initiation à Inkscape' manual was
completely different from the English flossmanuals manual, contents-wise.
>From what I have seen, the French one is more of a guide, that describes
the main functionality for new users (e.g. it explains usage by topic,
and copy-paste and saving a file are at the end, in the chapter
'Advanced techniques'). The English, and more outdated, one is more of a
reference, more like Tav's manual.

In my opinion, the 'official' manual should be more along the reference
line, so all that undocumented, advanced functionality will get a chance
of being documented. So I would rather start from the outdated, English
one. But that's to be discussed, and any up-to-date manual is better
than no manual :)

Hope I got everything you said correctly, Victor,
thanks again,
 Maren

>
>
>
> --Victor Westmann
>
> 2017-04-07 14:42 GMT-07:00 Sylvain Chiron <chironsylvain@...364...
> <mailto:chironsylvain@...397...fr>>:
>
>     Le 06/04/2017 à 19:06, Victor Westmann a écrit :
>     > I was just wondering if new languages,  based on the English manual,
>     > would use Inkscape images in English or if they would like to
>     retake the
>     > same screenshots in different languages?
>
>     It would be pleasant to be able to propose translated images, the
>     original ones being used as default. I like doing perfect work — :).
>     --
>     Sylvain
>
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