Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: language

  • Multiple Languages, Multiple Approaches

    Multiple Languages, Multiple Approaches

    I was contemplating WordPress and how it handles multiple languages recently. There are really two main aspects of multilingual sites. There’s multiple languages for the reader (the visitor) and there’s multiple languages for the admin. The two may not be in sync.

    For the Admin

    This has always been a little tricky. Assuming all projects have the same number of available language packs, you get two primary methods of translating the admin section.

    First is the site is set for a language. That means the owner of the website decides “This site will be English, have a nice day.”

    The other option is to have the setting be per user, so a user goes to their settings page and says “I speak French.” Obviously the main site setting (see above) will be where they start from, and this can be a little weird to find on some apps.

    The per-user setting is the most common, though it gets rather complex when you consider things like a WordPress multisite network. What if I want to make a site for the French and edit it in English? In MediaWiki too, this is an issue. I can only edit French WikiPedia in French. Initially. I can go in and change it per site, but there’s no global ‘default my account to English.’ Which is right? In the case of WikiPedia, it would be sensible to default me to the language on the site where I first make my account. If I sign up via fr.wikipedia.org, I should default to French.

    For the Front End

    If you only need one language, this is pretty easy. Pick the language for the site, write in it, and you’re done. For most Americans, this is ‘standard.’ But what happens when you need multiple languages on the front end? For the most part, things have to be either intended from the start or something you add in later. And both have drawbacks.

    WikiPedia, for example, has two methods. First they have a site for each language that cross links back to other languages:

    WikiPedia keeps links to other languages on the sidebar

    They do this via Interlanguage Links, but also via an extension called Translate which allows groups of people to translate.

    ZenPhoto uses serialized data. When you edit your content, you can add in the descriptions for it in each language. This has pros and cons. Weird things happen if the CMS ever forgets what language you’re using (an issue I actually did have for a while).

    When we look at WordPress, it tends to use plugins. Currently I’ve been recommending Bogo for translations. The other options are to make a Multisite and have each language be a site, but without the Interlanguage Links features of MediaWiki, cross-linking people back and forth based on language can be complicated.

    Another options?

    I’m not as versed in translations as I should be. Are you? I’d love to hear how you (and your projects) handle multiple languages for both admins and visitors.

  • Markdown Isn’t All Bad

    Markdown Isn’t All Bad

    It’s not a secret I hate markdown. It’s annoying to remember various commands, and one of the things I loved about WordPress from the start was that I didn’t have to learn bbCode or anything beyond the HTML I knew. When Jetpack included Markdown, I was a huge opponent. I thought it was useless and pointless and a waste of space.

    I now use it in many of my posts.

    You see, I don’t write in the visual editor. I used to, but there are ‘glitches’ with it. Like I couldn’t see the embed for Facebook (it showed up blank for some reason), and I had trouble embedding video content that required me to paste in script code. Then when I starting writing code, like I do on this site, I needed to make sure the formatting didn’t get mangled. It all boiled down to giving me two places where I use the Visual editor, and everything else is text.

    That’s all well and good until I fell in love with my iPad mini.

    You see I also have a major annoyance with the iOS app for WordPress. It’s too easy to post to the wrong site and it’s problematic when you want to upload featured images or make custom excerpts or have any custom post types. That means I use Chrome or Safari on iOS to write blog posts. If I’m offline, I write it up in Notes or Byword and just have it there until I’m ready to import. But I use WordPress in my browser because that’s where it works ‘best.’

    Except HTML on an iPad is a pain in my ass.

    It really, really, is. The number of clicks you have to do just to make a header, or strong text, is annoying. It’s three clicks to make an <h2> and it’s not even in the same place. It’s one click to get to the numbers, another (one up from where you hit to get to numbers) to go to advanced characters. Then you can press the button. Any chance I have to minimize my clicks means I can type even fast.

    And you bet your bippy I’m fast at typing on my iPad.

    Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for writing for the web.

    John Gruber’s Markdown syntax primer is the only place that really took the time to make sense of Markdown to me. Everyone else just said ‘It’s what we use’ or ‘It’s faster’ or (worst) ‘It’s better.’

    No. No. No. Better is what works for you. HTML, for the most part, works for me. And for me, a small subset of markdown syntax terms work very, very well to speed up my writing:

    
## Title

### Subtitle

&amp;amp;gt; Blockquote

    There are a few more, like the codeblock (which I don’t use, since I like pretty formatting better) but the ability to use backticks and say <code> is pretty nice.

    So do I like Markdown? No. It’s hard to remember ‘new’ syntax. But the ones I can use without having to close tags makes me a little happier and speeds me up a bit. For that, it’s pretty good. I can use it to enhance my HTML, and I wish that MediaWiki let me use HTML and Markdown instead of their woe begotten WikiSyntax. My kingdom for <table> in MediaWiki. Am I right?

    Now. If I could just get John Gruber to increase his font size.