[OSM-dev] "Available Languages" on wiki. and real estate

[Jeff Meyer]

Hi Tobias -

Thanks for the background - it's very helpful!

Moving to MediaWiki looks like it'll be a step in the right direction.
However, it implements the language switcher in a way consistent with what
I'm suggesting - please see the upper-right corner of this page for an
example: http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate

Perhaps users should be allowed to have it collapsed or expanded by default?

While I appreciate your suggestion, 100% of wiki users are currently
impacted by a control that eats up 5-6 lines (15-20% of the vertical screen
space on a 1400x900 display) but that could be solved with a
discretely-located 2 word toggle for some large % of the users who use
other languages. (e.g. English/Deutsch or
Italiano/中文（繁體）<http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:Translate#>)
I'm
guessing that there aren't a lot of people bouncing across more than 2
languages at a time.

So, my premise is not that this isn't important, just that the way it's
implemented is inefficient.

(Others would add that the current language bar is a bit messy & makes
things like the home page less friendly to newcomers, but I think those are
tightly coupled with efficiency...)

Thanks, Jeff


On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Tobias Knerr <osm at tobias-knerr.de> wrote:

> On 08.11.2012 19:03, Jeff Meyer wrote:
> > https://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/4675
> >
> > Now... to figure out how to do this...
>
> As I've commented on the ticket, this might not be the best point in
> time for fine-tuning the visual aspect of the translations. There has
> been discussion about using the MediaWiki Translate extension for better
> handling of translations and installation of this extension is scheduled
> for the next software upgrade:
> http://wiki.osm.org/Talk:Wiki_Translation#Translate_extension
>
> More generally, though, I feel slightly uncomfortable with your
> suggestions to free "valuable real estate" or even collapse the list by
> default. Most of our wiki content is not available in all languages, and
> realistically will never be. (Many pages are not even expected to be
> translated, such as proposals.) So switching between languages will
> inevitably happen quite often for every user who wants to neither miss
> out on a lot of wiki content nor go English only.
>
> Yes, it makes sense to think about a language link redesign. However, it
> should not be based on the premise that these aren't important, and for
> practical reasons I would prefer to wait until the technical foundations
> of the translation system are in place.
>
> Tobias
>
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>



-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
jeff at gwhat.org
206-676-2347
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