textpattern.com internationalisation

etc · 2013-05-16 12:08:26

Astonishingly many people, when searching for a “free CMS”, will do it in their own language. Now try to google for “CMS libre”: typo3-fr.org/ and www.automne-cms.org/ come first, followed by the inevitables WP, Drupal and Joomla. Even if some (say, french) user is patient enough to reach textpattern.com/, he will be likely even not to try it because c’est en anglais…

Every major CMS website has “official” localized entry points (www.joomla.fr/, fr.wordpress.org/), which, I think, is important. Now try fr.textpattern.com/… I know about txp-fr.net/, textpattern.de/ and so on, but that’s not this. I think at least the main pages (index, features, about, etc) on textpattern.com should be translated and referenced in many languages. Is this technically feasible/easy? If so, I’m sure each of us loves TXP enough to maintain the translation of 5-6 pages.

philwareham · 2013-05-16 17:11:24

Hmmm, interesting. I’ll give it some thought.

Destry · 2013-06-03 16:26:01

I think Oleg’s suggestion is a great idea. If you were to do a competitive analysis against other websites, this might be one benchmark to measure and you’d probably find, as Oleg more or less did, that it’s an opportunity for Textpattern to make a mark where it otherwise has few opportunities to do so in the CMS-saturated market.

This is a great opportunity to consider new collaboration with the international community. Sure, textpattern.com could try and handle it all with MLP and rely on community contributions for translations, but that’s over-controlling the ways people can help, and requiring more effort on T-corps. I think there’s enough of that already by nobody being able to help on server-side of family real estate.

Why not consider partnering with the owners of those other domains like textpattern.de, textpattern.nl, textpattern.ru, etc which are pretty useless otherwise (and a shame) and let them serve as sister language sites—exact same content as .com but just fully localized in the implied languages—using the same visual brand identity, style guide, etc. T-corps can define the way forward (brand definition, copyright license, etc) and any country site that wants onboard follows along. Thereby promoting more lateral camaraderie with the international community, not to mention make better use of those relevant domains. (More places to download Txp…get them to keep track collectively.)

Another interesting benefit from this is that those sites could also take on the responsibility of creating/maintaining user docs in their own languages. They could choose how they wanted to do that using whatever tool. The obvious benefit of this is the current docs wiki could simplify considerably, focusing on English only, perhaps even pair down so much as to not even need a wiki anymore, maybe just a small Txp install. Imagine the technical overhead that would eliminate. The only reason I’ve ever argued for MediaWiki over the years is because of the language translation lock-in. With that gone, there’s no need to stay with MW, and problems like these are eliminated. Not to mention how much easier it would be to make front-end design changes on English user docs without MW in the way.

Seriously, why not draft up a plan, post it as a blog article that invites those owners to consider the idea and see what happens from there. Getting .com redesigned would be the first step so that a model of design was in place for following (including guidelines, etc), but after that it’s just domain owners getting busy on their own. And if they are sharing the work with their countryfolk, then the collaborative nature ripples outward and so forth and that is good for morale and this project.

Since all of this would require .com to redesign and create the style guide anyway, there’s no additional work for Phil. In fact, it would be less work than if T-corps tries to internationalize .com and maintain it over time in a growing number of languages. Bad idea. Better idea would be for Phil to use that time focusing on the front-end work of the other family sites which need attention. Progress in two directions at once. ;)

Why would this not be a good idea? What am I missing?

etc · 2013-06-03 20:49:29

I am glad this proposal gets very valuable support, thank you. The material side is not what I’m good at, but both approaches have their (dis)advantages. Destry has thoroughly exposed the benefits of decentralization, that would be nice, but looks more like an ideal for the moment. :) I think we could start on .com, and let Destry’s idea make its way. Additionally, this would demonstrate Textpattern+MLP capacity to drive a multilingual site. Later, if needed, fr.textpattern.com could be redirected to textpattern.fr.

BTW, I have discovered Textpattern on adblockplus.org/ some years ago. It is still on duty on the blog, but Wladimir had to switch the main site to Anwiki, shame on us.

NicolasGraph · 2013-08-30 11:23:53

I’m coming from this topic and as a french textpattern user I would be glad to see a textpattern.fr website. I thought about that because I started to translate wiki pages but there were some problems and Destry told me about this topic. Actually I’m thinking that big contents like the tags reference could stay in english only as every (?) designers and dev speak english (I mean, enough to understand basic things), but it would be great to find a simple install doc, and a final user manual in french. The second one could contain an admin manual, a writer manual and a designer manual. A dev manual could be also find here, but only simple docs like the Textpattern Semantic Model, a tag explanation and a tag list link to the big english doc…
…Everything on a textpattern powered website of course! :)

Last edited by NicolasGraph (2013-08-30 15:35:48)

etc · 2013-08-30 15:40:02

That’s great, and textpattern.fr is still available. I still think that “official” presentational pages would be better on .com, automatically adopting its visual brand (look at textpattern.de or textpattern.ru to see what I mean) and staying up to date. But manuals can reasonably live their own lives, especially if it saves some trouble with multi-language publishing.

I’ve got no idea of hosting plans but will be glad to participate by any means.

Last edited by etc (2013-08-30 19:44:54)

NicolasGraph · 2013-08-30 17:35:14

I just bought the domain, without any host plan, to keep it for this kind of project.
Of course, it could redirect to textpattern.com at the moment (if someone send me the DNS) and I can transfer it if needed.
I don’t read the french forum a lot, but we should maybe open a french topic about textpattern.fr.

Edit: Done

Last edited by NicolasGraph (2013-08-31 08:32:05)

Destry · 2013-08-31 14:46:40

Great initiative, Nicolas!

etc wrote:

…and textpattern.fr is still available.

That’s amazing. I can’t believe I never thought to look, but the fact it was available is amazing.

I still think that “official” presentational pages would be better on .com, automatically adopting its visual brand (look at textpattern.de or textpattern.ru to see what I mean) and staying up to date. But manuals can reasonably live their own lives, especially if it saves some trouble with multi-language publishing.

I understand what you mean by “automatically adopting” the brand, to ensure that using the brand is done correctly. And the .ru and .de sites are indeed painful examples of it done bad. But keep in mind those were done a long time ago when the idea of Txp brand was a pipe dream. Further, and as much as I’m a believer in brand recognition and consistency, I don’t think that alone is reason to congest .com with non-English content or ask devs to manage internationalization activities.

Maybe Nicolas, with his willingness to setup .fr right, in collaboration with .com, sets the bar for other language sites to follow suit. And we can facilitate/support that kind of direction by providing starter templates, styles guides, or whatever else would be helpful to bring a language site into line with the brand. Maybe even make some of those things available on Github, as is the fashion these days. And sure, one of the the allowances for satellite sites could be AdWords, if a given site wanted to do that. Somebody is footing the bill of owning and hosting the domains, after all. Phil could easily create an AdWords pattern for the brand/templates as part of the style guide.

.com could even add incentive to this trend by only recognizing/acknowledging language site partnerships (e.g., via a “Partnerships” link in the footer) with language domains that use—and adhere to—the established brand and promotional guidelines that would be available.

But, more to the immediate, let’s look forward to Phil’s new branding, and then what kinds of possibilities it might provide language collaborators like Nicolas. I for one would vote for turning individual languages off in the wiki as new non-English docs began appearing elsewhere online, beginning with French. A whole lot of wiki housecleaning could be done from such a step.

P.S.: I never knew you could do this with links… “$” :url. Learned only by quoting Oleg’s copy. ;)

Last edited by Destry (2013-08-31 14:50:12)

etc · 2013-08-31 16:17:08

Destry wrote:

I understand what you mean by “automatically adopting” the brand, to ensure that using the brand is done correctly. And the .ru and .de sites are indeed painful examples of it done bad. But keep in mind those were done a long time ago when the idea of Txp brand was a pipe dream. Further, and as much as I’m a believer in brand recognition and consistency, I don’t think that alone is reason to congest .com with non-English content or ask devs to manage internationalization activities.

That’s the problem: keeping them up to date requires some discipline, that our community, however small, fortunately lacks. Actually, it would suffice that .com adopted a semantic template stable enough, so local sites could simply mirror .com, filling it with their own stuff (hope it’s legal).

Destry · 2013-08-31 18:25:37

etc wrote:

…keeping them up to date requires some discipline, that our community, however small, fortunately lacks.

If you meant “unfortunately”, I’d agree. Whether it’s discipline, interest, or something other, there’s a lack of it.

Actually, it would suffice that .com adopted a semantic template stable enough, so local sites could simply mirror .com, filling it with their own stuff (hope it’s legal).

Whatever works. My only interest anymore is with what I’m still directly concerned with, which in this case is the wiki. The multi-lingual efforts in the wiki have always been a hack at best, and it would be a relief for front-end admin/editors (like me) and back-end admins (now .com) to eliminate that from wiki overhead. If that happens one language at a time, as external efforts come up to muster, so be it.

NicolasGraph · 2013-09-01 10:03:43

etc a écrit:

Actually, it would suffice that .com adopted a semantic template stable enough, so local sites could simply mirror .com, filling it with their own stuff (hope it’s legal).

Even if I like to design textpattern websites, I have to say that what Oleg think is quite logical. If we do that we would need the Phil’s agreement obviously.

@Destry See you for a drink…

Last edited by NicolasGraph (2013-09-01 10:05:31)

etc · 2013-09-02 08:48:57

NicolasGraph wrote:

Even if I like to design textpattern websites, I have to say that what Oleg think is quite logical. If we do that we would need the Phil’s agreement obviously.

The idea is that .com should provide a welcome page in every language, whatever technology, as Destry says. Ideally, the content of this page should be synchronized with national sites, but nothing stops them from having their own design.

@Destry See you for a drink…

Amazing, I used to live in Strasbourg some years ago too… soon you could launch StTextpatternbourg.fr :)

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#1 2013-05-16 12:08:26

textpattern.com internationalisation

#2 2013-05-16 17:11:24

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#3 2013-06-03 16:26:01

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#4 2013-06-03 20:49:29

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#5 2013-08-30 11:23:53

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#6 2013-08-30 15:40:02

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#7 2013-08-30 17:35:14

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#8 2013-08-31 14:46:40

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#9 2013-08-31 16:17:08

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#10 2013-08-31 18:25:37

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#11 2013-09-01 10:03:43

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

#12 2013-09-02 08:48:57

Re: textpattern.com internationalisation

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