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

[Tobias Knerr]

On 08.11.2012 23:32, Jeff Meyer wrote:
> 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

I'm not entirely familiar with the extension yet, but it appears to be
up to the wiki using the extension; see http://userbase.kde.org/Marble
for a different example which resembles our current system. So we will
probably still have different options even with the extension (and
hopefully these will be more sophisticated thanks to the better
technological foundation).

> 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.

It amounts to 5-6 lines only on the home page. Almost no other page has
that many translations - unfortunately.

Of course I'm not opposed to doing it differently, but that will only be
a real improvement if we actually make translation system smarter. For
example, letting the user easily toggle between those 2-5 languages
requested by their browser settings (maybe plus English) and offering
the others collapsed by default might be such an improvement.

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

It certainly is. In part that's because it was built by users without
admin rights, on a Wiki that doesn't actually know what language a
page's content is using.

> (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...)

Depends. It makes the page more friendly to those newcomers who want to
quickly access the home page in their own language. If I'm not mistaken,
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org will always take you to the English page,
as will many external links. (The links from osm.org at least are
thankfully localized.)

Yet again, this behaviour is something that could be improved but
requires technological improvements in addition to the design work.

Tobias