Le 08/12/2013 18:05, Philippe Sigaud a écrit :
First, kudos for translating all this! I'm sure that'll be a good
reference and maybe pave the way for other translations (Spanish,
German & Japanese come to mind).

I have a few questions:

- why did you use this whata! language instead of a standard format,
like markdown or even ddoc? At least that way you can re-use many
tools that already exist. markdown is known by many people, and pandoc
is able to translate it into dozens of different format (including
LaTeX and pdf and ePub).

To be fair, I used Whata! mainly because I am the author of this syntax and I'm used to it.

I can try to explain why I wrote Whata! instead of Markdown.
When I started Whata!, it was for writing maths lessons, just before Markdown started to be well known by everybody. I wanted it fast to write and easy to read, I didn't know Pandoc at that time. Markdown is in fact easier to read but I don't like some part of it like being able to write HTML code inside it or indenting for code blocs: I like to indent my documents when I write them. I wanted support for maths, for sections like in HTML5, and the possibility to extend the syntax with custom tags and first class support for HTML as well as PDF output, among other things. I'm willing to make writing complex documents with Whata! possible, which I think Markdown is not for.

Concerning LaTeX, I find it verbose, inconsistent, rigid, difficult to learn and I think it doesn't help enough to separate presentation and contents. It is excellent for its PDF rendering and its syntax for writing algorithms and formulas, but I don't see myself taking notes in LaTeX. Morever, LaTeX to HTML converters don't seem to produce pretty HTML.

Regarding DDoc, I just didn't know D when I started Whata! (I started it in PHP, and I still use the second version of the PHP program to produce HTML versions of the document), and DDoc when I started the translation of the book. I still find Markdown better to write plain documents than DDoc.

That said:
- I might be entirely wrong in even writing Whata! instead of embracing Markdown - Markdown should be good enough for this book, as long as it it possible to write one file by chapter without any hack
 - DDoc might be good, but a LaTeX output would be great
- I'll try to add support for Whata! in Pandoc. Maybe DDoc should also be added to Pandoc? - If necessary, we'll switch to Markdown for this translation. However, it would be sad for me :-) Please say it if you want to work in Markdown.

Seeing the whole translation written in Whata!, would be represent a small success for me, but I'm eager to drop Whata! for this translation if people ask for it. On the other hand, I think Whata! is easy enough for proofreading and hopefully for writing new chapters.

Please comment ;-)


`Some chapters, like the chapter on exceptions, are somewhat broken
because of special characters. When I or someone find a way to make
LaTeX handle special characters that are not part of its default font,
we'll be in the best world ever.`

- What special chars?
 ◁ :  U+25C1
 ▶ :  U+25B6
 � :  U+FFFD


- can we push pull requests directly on Gitorious? I'm more used to github.
I never used pull requests yet, I think it is possible. I'll try to get some information about this and post here

- How do you intend to publish this text?
Short answer : in PDF and HTML format on dlang-fr.org. I'll let Munrek present his website again if needed ;-)

I think we should progressively publish chapter as they are proofread, and show a notice to say that the document is under translation and proofreading and if people want to participate, they can. I'm open to any other idea of how we should do this.


Thanks for your answer !


Unfortunately, I deleted the original post by error, so here it is.

Hello everybody.

I published the current state of my translation on Gitorious:

https://gitorious.org/programmez-en-d

There are about 42 chapters still to translate, with three of them still
to translate from Turkish to English.

I think it is time to begin a proofread of the first chapters.
For the moment, I'm willing to continue the translation of the chapters
which are still to translate, even though this might change in the
future. This week I managed to translate 4 chapters, I hope to advance
the translation at good pace for Christmas holidays.

Important facts:
 - You can get the ordering of the chapters in langage_d.whata, which
is the main document, and in map.txt, which lists the connections
between file names of English chapters at
https://code.google.com/p/ddili/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fsrc%2Fders%2Fd.en
and French file names.
 - The document is written in Whata!, which is a home made syntax
translating in LaTeX and HTML to produce the final document. You can get
a program written in D which translate Whata! into LaTeX here:
https://gitorious.org/whata/whata-d/

   To produce a PDF of the whole document, install whata and type:
    $ pdfwhata langage_d.whata
   Be sure you installed XeLaTeX.

   To produce a PDF of a chapter, type:
    $ pdfwhata the_chapter.whata

   Some chapters, like the chapter on exceptions, are somewhat broken
because of special characters. When I or someone find a way to make
LaTeX handle special characters that are not part of its default font,
we'll be in the best world ever.
 - corrections of the exercises are in the corrections folder.
 - first chapters were translated a year ago, and this is my first
real-life translation of a document. Last chapters were translated
recently, often under tiredness. While I try to do my best, expect many
silly mistakes (I've kind of proofread some parts, it wasn't pretty)
 - The translation should be published on dlang-fr, both in HTML and
PDF. I still didn't published the Whata! to HTML converting program as
it's not quite ready in my opinion, but it works somewhat well.

For those who want to  proofread, the best thing to do is probably to
say you are proofreading the chapter x, and contact me for corrections.
You can ask for a pull-request or send me your correction by mail, or
use another way I didn't think of and is convenient for all of us. In
case you have any doubt about whether a chapter is already proofread or
not, please ask, I will keep track of what happens. Several proofreaders
of the same chapter is not bad!

I will be more than happy if you suggest improvements, rephrasing or
anything beyond grammar and orthographic mistakes. Please spam; I
already spam Ali with corrections of his English version. I will be glad
if you begin your e-mail subjects with [trad-ddili].

If you have any idea, question, suggestion, reclamation, please ask :-)

Do you think we should start publishing the first proofread chapters?

Cheers,
Raphaël


Reply via email to