To me a newbie,this has has been an interesting discussion. Yesterday I ventured into the Help pages, to find that the majority were in French.
We speak here about the internal help of Ancestris, the one accessible using the F1 key.
Yes, that's right, but even the part in french is partly obsolete (if we consider Ancestris v. 0.10 as many improvements have been made since v. 0.9).
The skeleton of the help structure is good, but the help itself should be totally revisited and rewrite.
So instead of writing the help, first in french, then translate it to english, it should be the opposite, the help files should be written in english first, then translated to the other languages. The main language is english, not french.
I can read these slowly (with the aid of a dictionary) but decided that as time permits I would translate them into English, using a two step procedure of Machine translation followed by Editing and correction.
See above. It's better to write the english help from scratch, then translate it to another language.
I have noted some syntax errors and a few spelling mistakes in the Help that is already in English and hope to correct this too - eventually.
It would help, yes.
Have not yet looked at your bundled files, nor discovered what is your preferred format. I have recently been writing in Lyx and using Open Document for release, both are suitable for editing, ODT probably better in this case.
If I try to summarize how it works, I could say you have three different situations.
1) If you want to translate Ancestris to another language, except english, you have to use Trancestris. It's a fantastic tool, and actually all translators use Trancestris. The information of Trancestris are accessible on our
Trac web site.
2) If you want to fix the english properties files, you can't use Trancestris, but a simple editor like Notepad, or Gedit or
Jedit (which works for Windows, Linux and MacOs). So if you want to fix the english files (the properties files), it's better to ask me to send them to you one by one. In each file, you have special parameters which must be kept to allow translation to the other languages. This is an example :
OptionsExport/blueprints=Blueprint: {0}
OptionsExport/preferences/gedcoms=Genealogy parameters
OptionsExport/extensions=Extensions
OptionDisplayPanel.jCheckBox1.toolTipText=<html> If this option is checked, when you start Ancestris, it allows you to OR will re-open the windows that were open during the previous<br> Ancestris session. </html>
OptionDisplayPanel.jCheckBox1.text=Remember opened windows
#NOI18N
OptionDisplayPanel.jLabel5.text=
OptionDisplayPanel.jLabel3.text=Window
3) If you want to create or translate (from english to another language) the internal help files, you have to use a simple editor again, as those files are in html language (they are web pages). We have tried to use Open Office (or different html editors), but Oo added multiple codes which make the html pages too loaded, so when I wrote the french ones, I used Jedit (see above). To create the help files, it's better if I send the structure itself, so the files, the subdirectories, etc, that way it's easier, for the one who want to help, to understand how it works, and with the already existing files, it helps a lot.
However, firstly I have to become familiar with Ancentris.
Yes, absolutely. To be able to write help for a software we must be familiar with it first.
Thank you for your help Gordon. That's great. Francois