Alex,
akede wrote:
JimDeLaHunt wrote:
1. Better documentation about the process of installing Joomla for multilingual use, installing Joom!Fish, and finding and installing language packs. At least have a detailed wiki page or forum article with step-by-step installation instructions. Better yet, incorporate JoomFish and language pack installation into the Joomla installation process.
Have you seen the user manual on the help.joomla.org site? Basically the language installation is quite strait forward, and the installation of the fish requires only the component installation - nothing more.
Yes, I read the user manual on the help.joomla.org site, and I think it doesn't provide what I'm asking for in #1 above. It doesn't mention Joom!Fish, or where to find language packs, or how to set Joomla! to use UTF-8. Also there's little documentation about the higher-level site planning issues: for instance, whether to put your site in UTF-8 or other encodings, and interactions between Joom!Fish and OpenSEF. For me, especially because I wanted my site in UTF-8 to allow postings in both German and Japanese, there were many extra steps. It was complex enough to be worth further documentation.
akede wrote:
But I'm fine with it to add an wiki page on the joomfish project about it. You can easily post a forums entry on joomfish.net in the discussions or submit a information in one of the tracker attaching a text to it. I will then upload it to the wiki.
Good! I'll package the documentation I'm writing on my provider's wiki and post it on the joomfish.net forums. I'll let you and others on the Joom!Fish team take it from there.
akede wrote:
JimDeLaHunt wrote:
2. Have language packs include translations for "menus" (i.e. menu items) and "modules" (especially the titles of menus) which are included with the Joomla! sample data. Right now, I can install a language pack (e.g. German or Japanese), and only about 1/4 of the strings on the main page start appearing in that language. About 3/4 continue to appear in English. I'd like to see translations for strings such as "Home", "Contact Us", "Newsfeeds", "FAQs", etc. as part of the language packs.
That's a bit tricky because the information, like the menu items, are not stored in the the text files at all - those information are the dynamic information which are stored in the database.
You are right, it's tricky. But I'm making a point about user benefit. The user (a Joomla! site administrator) doesn't care how hard it is to accomplish these things. They just want the results. And, from a naive user point of view, if the Joomla! installer can inject some sample data, why can't the Joom!Fish installer inject some sample translations? (If Joom!Fish were part of the Joomla! install, then this would probably be much easier for the user and the Joom!Fish developer.)
akede wrote:
And for the translation for those information, you have the fish.
Maybe I didn't make my point clear. If I have to figure out the German words for the standard Joomla! English-language menu items, then I am redoing work that many others have done before. That is a waste. It would be much better for someone to do the translation once, then package their work in a form that I and others can easily take advantage of.
akede wrote:
However - Joomla! 1.5 will include a multi lingual translation for the installation process and a link to the help.joomla.org page where you can download addtional language files.
1.5 will make it also more easy to install automatically translated sample data which will be provided by the translations teams.
Translating the installation UI into multiple languages is very helpful for many Joomla! administrators, but it's not what I was referring to in #2. Putting a link from help.joomla.org to sources for language files would be a step towards #1.
akede wrote:
One last remark. Ivo has published a project on forge.joomla.org, which includes a multilingual database already. You can select from several language while installation and directly get the translated sample data installed.
Interesting. I'll take a look for it when I have time. But my main focus in this post is on suggesting features for future Joom!Fish releases, not on solving my own problems.
akede wrote:
The official forums of the fish run at joomfish.net - on this forge you will find couple of discussion boards and additional information.
You mean
http://joomfish.net/ which redirects to
http://forge.joomla.org/sf/sfmain/do/vi ... .joomfish/ , right? Yes, I took a look there. I have suggestions for the documentation at that site, which I'll post in the discussion boards there.
Thanks for the replies!
--Jim DeLaHunt jdlh.com