Hi Tom, all, On 06/02/2013 13:30, Tom Davies wrote: > Hi :) Should we be making an effort to inform the translators teams > that the Guides are more important to translate than the in-built > help?
This is two different things. Also, in some countries, you can't deliver a product without these help files. Another thing, translation is not the same as localization. When you translate the guides, you have all the context, it's a linear translation. When you localize the help files or the product, you only have strings, not related to each other because picked from different files, without other context than the name of the file and your experience. > > > While the in-built help is very handy and easy to access it's surely > a problem that it's now nearly a decade out of date. I'm sure a few > features have changed or been added in that time!! Doesn't the > in-built help now mislead people into trying things the wrong way > around. It's not a decade out of date, not that much :) Some strings in the dialog box that has been added are not commented, some dialogs (like on Writer > Format > Title page) has no description associated, etc. Collecting the part removed and added could be a first step. > > > Generally on the Users List we have had quite a few people make > fairly serious complaints about the in-built help but all of them > have been turned around and made really happy by pointing them to the > full guides. Even people that grumbled about it being awkward to > look-up info compared to using an in-built help system. As said, the help doesn't explain how to use a feature, it describes it and gives the purpose of the function. Some parts are more detailed, but it's not the primary aim of a help file. The guides and the help are complementary. > > In the longer-term perhaps some current translators might be able to > help this team update the in-built help? Translators might know the > process of how to update but may not have the skills with English. > This team could help with the content. In the future, the en_US help files will be ported for modification on the wiki. That will really simplify the process to maintain it. But it's in the future. For now, we need people able to deal with the files, people able to understand a functionality before it's implemented, people able to proof read and test. > > In the shorter-term it might be easier to recruit more people into > the translations teams if they are able to avoid Xml and focus on > simply using simpler tools such as using LO itself on reasonably > large documents. Currently, it's not possible to avoid xml, the files are in .xhp forms, so you have to deal with them. As an example, I copy a part of the file commenting the numbering icon --------------------- <section id="numerierungausschalten"> <bookmark xml-lang="en-US" branch="hid/.uno:RemoveBullets" id="bm_id4060128" localize="false"/><!-- HID added by script --> <bookmark branch="hid/.uno:RemoveBullets" xml-lang="en-US" id="bm_id3147170"/><paragraph id="hd_id3145822" role="heading" level="1" oldref="1" l10n="U" xml-lang="en-US"><link href="text/swriter/02/06040000.xhp" name="Numbering Off">Numbering Off</link></paragraph> <paragraph l10n="U" role="paragraph" id="par_id3154505" xml-lang="en-US" oldref="2"><ahelp hid=".uno:RemoveBullets" visibility="visible">Turns off numbering or bullets in the current paragraph or selected paragraphs.</ahelp></paragraph> </section> --------------------------------------------------- All the information (well this one oldref="2" is deprecated) contained in this piece will be needed to modify the file. Even if you work on Writer environment, you'll need to know what are the section, paragraph, localize, etc. tags for. Kind regards Sophie -- Sophie Gautier <[email protected]> Tel:+33683901545 Membership & Certification Committee Member - Co-founder The Document Foundation -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
