Docs Meeting Update
Pasi Lallinaho
pasi at shimmerproject.org
Thu May 14 08:19:50 UTC 2020
To be honest, English is the least of our worries here. It is the
source/primary language of the docs and I would argue anybody capable of
any of the English "translations" can read them all. Having different
"English" translations sounds weird to be to begin with.
But more importantly, this isn't about English. What about Russian,
French or Spanish? Those are languages that are used all over the world.
Using the Russian, French or Spanish flags to represent those languages
would be even more awkward IMO.
And what about Canadian French and Canadian English? If both had
translations, would they both show the Canadian flag? Wouldn't that make
the flag completely irrelevant? (And again, would a Canadian English
translation *really* differ from the source that much that it was worth
it to both "translate" it and keep maintaining the translation?)
TL;DR: (Any) flags (or combined flags) simply do not represent languages
well enough that it would be sensible to use them as representative
images, so please let's not.
Cheers,
Pasi
On 14.5.2020 0.24, Yousuf Philips wrote:
> At the sunday meeting we discussed potentially going with a half USA
> and half UK flag[1], which is commonly used elsewhere, though as we
> have 'English (GB)' as one of the documentation languages, and its
> using the UK flag, it doesn't seem that beneficial. Most people don't
> know the St George flag, so using it as flag to represent English
> isn't beneficial. If we had translations for 'English (CA)', 'French
> (CA)' and 'English (AU)', they would have those countries flags.
>
> [1]
> http://www.lingualearnenglish.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/flag.jpg
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 9:17 PM Paul Sutton <zleap at disroot.org
> <mailto:zleap at disroot.org>> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 07/05/2020 12:48, Pasi Lallinaho wrote:
> > I don't know if the language names need "spicing up", but if you
> insist,
> > I guess you can look at introducing some kind of button style
> for the
> > language links, ideally matching our website looks (other parts
> of the
> > documentation follow our websites visual style as well).
> >
> > I acknowledge it's a common thing to use flags to represent
> languages,
> > but IMO, it's bad practice.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Pasi
> >
> > On 7.5.2020 13.08, Yousuf Philips wrote:
> >> The language names are present below the flags and just having
> their
> >> names on a blank page doesn't look appealing. Any thoughts of
> how to
> >> spice it up if we were to only use the language names.
> >>
> >> It is quite common for flags to be used as language
> representatives,
> >> like for example in the keyboard layouts panel plugin as
> alternative
> >> for language name abbreviations.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Yousuf
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 11:09 AM Pasi Lallinaho
> >> <pasi at shimmerproject.org <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org>
> <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org>>>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> My suggestion is to use the language names as they are
> >> representative of languages. Or in other words, languages
> do not
> >> have any sensible representative images, so I would not use
> any.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Pasi
> >>
> >> On 6.5.2020 17.57, Yousuf Philips wrote:
> >>> So what would be your suggestion and an image related to
> languages?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 10:34 AM Pasi Lallinaho
> >>> <pasi at shimmerproject.org <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org>
> <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org <mailto:pasi at shimmerproject.org>>>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Please, no flags for languages, as they are not
> representative.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>> Pasi
> >>>
> >>> On 5.5.2020 22.00, Yousuf Philips wrote:
> >>>> Hi Team,
> >>>>
> >>>> Here is my idea of what the docs homepage could look
> like,
> >>>> in two variations.
> >>>> https://imgur.com/a/04nvIt6
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 5:11 PM Yousuf Philips
> >>>> <ypharis at gmail.com <mailto:ypharis at gmail.com>
> <mailto:ypharis at gmail.com <mailto:ypharis at gmail.com>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi Team,
> >>>>
> >>>> We had the meeting yesterday which Sean, Bernardo,
> >>>> Stephen, and I attended, where we discussed our
> plans to
> >>>> improve the documentation. Various meeting
> minutes were
> >>>> put into the main google doc[1] and we plan to
> meet once
> >>>> a week to discuss things to keep the pace of work
> going
> >>>> forward. Each week we'll be working on a single docs
> >>>> page/chapter, in a google doc I prepare, so that
> we all
> >>>> have a central place to collaborate on its
> improvement,
> >>>> and can also reach out to the community to contribute
> >>>> to. At each meeting we'll review the page's edits and
> >>>> finalize it and then it will be copied over to
> the git repo.
> >>>>
> >>>> Sean will be investigating various options to make it
> >>>> easier for contributors to help keep the docs up to
> >>>> date. A telegram group[2] has been created for those
> >>>> that want to be involved and we can bridge it with a
> >>>> #xubuntu-docs irc channel if there are those
> wanting it.
> >>>>
> >>>> So for this week, we'll be improving the main
> >>>> documentation homepage[3] in this google doc[4].
> During
> >>>> the meeting we agreed upon these changes
> >>>> * As this page is not translated, the useful parts of
> >>>> the contents of this page will move to the Table of
> >>>> Contents (ToC) page, so that it can be translated.
> >>>> * The page would become just a language selector
> which
> >>>> leads to the translated ToC page.
> >>>>
> >>>> People can suggest ideas of how this language
> selector
> >>>> page can look in the google doc[4] or on the
> mailing list.
> >>>>
> >>>> Regards,
> >>>> Yousuf
> >>>>
> >>>> [1]
> >>>>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oGNc4nDmUkhk67-S07VKhOQ7tSWXUW6ureG8N7SVM_o/edit#
> >>>> [2] https://t.me/joinchat/CVgtjBP82eyMqVzhScdfAw
> >>>> [3] https://docs.xubuntu.org/2004/
> >>>> [4]
> >>>>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Aj_Wdj9Uq62Ju0bvjhz15NVdaI_SaAMo8xqdU9s67YE/edit#
>
>
> I agree about not using flags, if you're going to use flags, perhaps
> use the flag of St George to represent English. Having the GB and US
> flags, we both speak English. what about Canada, Australia and other
> countries where the first language is English. But Canada is both
> French and English and regions are very protective of that part of
> their
> culture.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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> xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:xubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Yousuf
>
--
Pasi Lallinaho (knome) › https://open.knome.fi/
Xubuntu contributor › https://xubuntu.org/
Xfce contributor › https://xfce.org/
Shimmer Project co-founder › https://shimmerproject.org/
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