note to all translators

[Doom9]

I think it would be useful if you kept the "this document was last modified on... " part of the original guide and just add your own timestamp.. that way you know which version you translated and if I update the document you know you have to go over it again.

and I'm sorry to announce that there have been a lot of link changes with the appearance of the new dvd decrypter guide and the removal of the superfluous dvd2avi guide (thanks horestes)

[epere4]

Doom9:
Would it be to much work for you to tell us (using this forum thread) every day if you did modifications or not in your pages?
If possible, we would apreciate if told us in which sections the modifications are, but if you at least tell us something like: "No page modifications today", "Great update in the DivX section", "Lots of modifications in every part of the site", etc, etc.
With that you save us a lot of time, especially if there are no updates.
Of course you don´t have to mention if there are modifications on the news page, because we read it every day and it is modified almost every day.

[Scipio]

I already had a private discussion with Doom9 about that topic.

Short version:

It's not possible for him to make some kind of "changelog" due to time constraints.
In other words: A changelog would cost him a lot of time that he doesn't have.


Longer version:

I'm sorry that we'll have to live with the news and the "this document was last modified on... ".

I hope he will find the time to state something like in the posting in this thread from time to time:

there have been a lot of link changes with the appearance of the new dvd decrypter guide and the removal of the superfluous dvd2avi guide

After all, his arguments are compelling. If he passes his time making changelogs etc, he won't be able to write the actual guides.

The administrative overhead would become to big of a factor for him and that wouldn't be fun to do at all since there are very often little updates.
That's about what he told me. Period.

[epere4]

Ok, I understand perfectly.
So I have a better idea. How about we helping each other so everytime any of us (people working on translations) sees that there is a new version of certain page, he/she tells evereybody else about it using the forum (maybe trough this thread or making another called, for instance, "page update report").
Just tell me what you think about this.

[Scipio]

Well, your idea isn't exactly "better", but it's an alternative...


I'd support that idea as long as I'm involved in this project.
I think Doom9 would certainly give us some help in such a thread.
But I respect his wish of not wanting to be "forced" to update a changelog everyday.
Occasional postings in a forum are a lot easier and less stupid daily work which no one of us wants to spend all the day with...

he/she tells evereybody else about it using the forum

hmmm, I'm just wondering how many female visitors doom9.net has... ;-)
I guess this percentage is below 10%, but perhaps I'm an idiot and don't understand women at all... :D Perhaps Spanish-speaking women are more interested in this than the German ones ;)


well - moving back to the idea:

of course a new thread would be useful - a "sticky" thread would be best (like this one).

[epere4]

I opened a new thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27808) for Page´s updates.
I already post one update.
The idea is that this post become "sticky", like Horester sugested, and that everybody who detects a page update inform it trough that thread.

@Horestes: I know this is not really a "better" solution, but at least it shouldn´t bother Doom9.


Edit: Edited Horestes´s name (was written Horester, sorry)

[fileman]

horester again *fg* ...

Perhaps you just change your nick, horestes!

Just joking...

Regards, fileman.

[epere4]

I found a Portuguese Mirror site of Doom9.
The adress is http://www.lusodivx.com/, and it´s been there for a long time, at least from october 2001. They even have their own Portuguese forum.

I´m sure Doom9 knew about this, but I tell anyway, in case other people don´t know.

I have already added a link to it in the Spanish site.

[Doom9]

yeah.. I've known about the page for a while now.. I forgot to mention it in the news for the last 2-3 days but it will definitely happen soon.. I've also updated the volunteer page btw.. now there's links to the active translation projects and this forum

[Scipio]

Well, I've had a look at that site and I'm not too impressed.

They do not exactly translate the guides if you look in this section...
And they don't have much guides either.
I think your project, epere4, is a bit more ambitious than that.


They even have their own Portuguese forum.


:D Have you had a look at how many posts/threads it has? :D

And now look back into doom9's forum *gg* ;)


There doesn't seem to be a huge demand for that site, since it only has had 20.000 visitors in 2 years less three months.
I its first week the german.doom9.net had about 8000.
Last days averaged at about 400 per day :)

[epere4]

@Horestes:
I think we don´t have to fight here, nor say who has the better mirror or something.
Maybe the site has lack of advertising and that´s why it doesn´t have so many visitors.
About people writing at the forum, consider that there are more English Speakers in the World than there are Portuguese. Without mentioning that lots of people who don´t have English as a primary language have it as a secondary one.
The lack of guides that site has may be because it is the work of only one person (I mean, I don´t see credits for other people, so I assume it is a one man work).

By the way, I took the idea of making polls in the site. I already placed a poll to find out what are the pages people prefer to be translated first.

[Scipio]

wasn't meant to be a fight..

competition is good anyway ;-)


you stated that doom9 must know that this site exists.
Well, since the site only copied doom9.net's design (okay, slightly abridged) but not much of its content, I doubt doom9 will link to it. He hasn't even linked to us (except in the news).

What I wanted to say is: Speaking for me alone, I wanted to create a German mirror hosted by doom9.net/org with translations of the guides.

The portuguese site obviously does not have the same aim and hasn't much support either (you're probably right in assuming it could be only one person). But the webmaster certainly deserves respect anyway!

Of course, the English site will be most visited (there aren't any Russian/Asian mirrors...) and also be most up-to-date...



And of course... Advertising the Site certainly helps a lot if you want more visitors...

Best advertising would be on doom9.net in my opinion.
I'm still waiting for doom9 to put a constant link on his frontpage, not just in the news that disappear slowly..

[Doom9]

I think I'll go with epere's way to link to the other mirrors.. doesn't require much design changes. one reason why I haven't put any permanent links is that atm it's a bit the wild west out there.. every page looks different.. and everything has their pros and cons... but I like the spanish version the most since it really looks like my page.. it requires zero effort to switch over.. of course I don't understand most of it but that's a detail.

[Scipio]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

I certainly also had the idea of just copying your design.
That's of course the most "transparent" solution for visitors who already know doom9.net (and where-what-is there).

But in order to organize this whole thing I decided against it because the important sites would be a bit lost in the jungle of menus etc.. First I want every possible co-worker to see what's what.

But after having translated the majority of the important guides (that's not too far away now), I wanted to switch to your design or - and that was (I know I'm repeating me) the idea from the start on - or I'll give these files to you as they are.
You'd just have to put them on your server and every link would work because all links remained the same (relative).

The downside of all this would be that adding a link to another language version (like I've done on the german guides that interlink between English/German) would mean a lot of work for you => not good for you since you already have plenty of work..

Hmmm, after thinking about this interlinking, I can probably forget the idea of every document carrying some flags (ATM that would be French, Spanish, German)... right?

so.. another idea/suggestion: You put these flags only on overview pages and *perhaps* on full guides (but the latter would also mean quite a bit of work as there are many full guides.. :(

What do you think? All overview pages containing flags - would that be possible to realize or am I asking for too much?


Just post your comments - and thanks for supporting these projects..

[epere4]

@Doom9:

Maybe you can use an automatic translator to understand a little bit what the spanish site says. You can follow this link (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.no%2Fdoom9esp%2F&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools) generated with Google Translator (http://www.google.com/language_tools) to read it in English (or at least English like ;) )

[Doom9]

well.. I understand all the news you translate without any effort ;) and as for the rest I'm pretty good at guessing.. comes from studying in 2 languagnes different from my mother tongue

@horestes: well.. I see your point.. I also have not asked you to change anything so far, have I? Anyway it's good that you intend to switch to my design when it's done.. that's perfectly okay with me.. right now you have a little more design liberties to make it easy for the translators.

as for flags.. flags on the main page is of course one thing.. then probably at the main guide overview pages (divx, svcd, dvd, audio, subs, etc) but I can't offer more (and as you said.. having 4 different flags would be a bit of overkill.. and every now and then there would even be more as there's a couple of single guides that have been translated all over the web).

as for the other two projects.. I sent a pm to the coordinator of the portugese mirror as there's certain things that are quite problematic... the extra links there don't always go to content that I would approve off and if there's my name on the page I will have to approve it.. the portugese version is also not mozilla compatible ( I get the html code onscreen).. as for the french one it also lacks all the efforts you and epere4 have made to coordinate the translation and then there's also the matter of the design :/

[epere4]

@All:
I´ll be out for the weekend, so the Spanish site won´t get any updates during that time. I will update everything when I get back.

I Hope Doom9 can put the links to the translated guides... and hope somebody else get involved in the Spanish project, because in the last few days there were no new translators (and we are begining to need them, no new translated guide today, for example).

See you

[Doom9]

I put up a german and a spanish flag now.. the other two are pending (the coordinators need to do some design changes and create a useful doc overview page first.. they've been notified abou that)

[Scipio]

Could you use equally sized flags? ;-)

On the german.doom9.net all flags have the same height.
Of course you could also use a bigger flag than with just 10 pixels height... but please use equal ones.

And... Thanks for putting up the links!

[Doom9]

happy now?

[Scipio]

yep, I'm happy with those flags now...

But could you change the name that is displayed in the title bar of the browser when you enter "german.doom.net"?

What about "Deutsche Doom9.net Übersetzungen" or something like on the Spanish redirector?
"Doom9 auf Deutsch - Beta Version" or something like that would also be okay; not a bad idea if all projects have a similar name when we'll finally achieve a better integration...

[Doom9]

I know another guy like you who is never satisfied with my work :devil: the .org redirects don't provide custom titles for every domain.. just a global setting that applies to all

[Scipio]

Ooops, I'll stop complaining if you are annoyed...

It's okay, then.
Should I know that guy who is never satisfied, too?

Anyway, in the Italian thread, I posted some translation guidelines...
Perhaps you make them sticky or copy them to the first post in this thread or something.
Additions/corrections from your side are welcome - it's also your wishes to some extent after all.

Here are some translation guidelines:

- Download doom9's site using Offline Explorer (www.metaproducts.com)

- Your site design should be identical to Doom9's (at least in the end, the German site isn't... yet)

- Create an own doc-overview.htm just like the http://doom9.org/doc-overview.htm . Mark the translated guides with a flag and the guides that are in the works with a "half-flag" or something (have a look at the German example: http://german.doom9.org/doc-overview.htm )

- Maybe you want to create a page with already translated guides (that will be the final doc-overview.htm in your language) so that interested people can see which guides are already available without being irritated by flags.

- Tell your visitors how to participate.

- Having done all this, you could ask for a domain like italian.doom9.net. :)

- And finally: Keep your page updated, at least the doc-overview.htm


These are just some suggestions...
They worked pretty well for the German and the Spanish project.
Don't hesitate to realize your own ideas. :)

[Doom9]

post all your guidelines to a separate thread and I'll make it sticky

[Scipio]

I posted them in a separate thread.


german.doom9.net is currently down. It'll be fixed asap.

seems as if 30 MB+ was a bit too much for home.no (my free web hoster). They only offer 5 MB as far as I can tell from "reading" (i.e. guessing) Norwegian.

I'll take care of another account, but that shows that it would be better hosting this stuff elsewhere. ;)

[epere4]

german.doom9.net is currently down. It'll be fixed asap.
seems as if 30 MB+ was a bit too much for home.no (my free web hoster). They only offer 5 MB as far as I can tell from "reading" (i.e. guessing) Norwegian.

Oops. I think I should start looking for a new server, too.

[fileman]

I also opened an account there, and I think it's 15 MB.

[Scipio]

Hi, I temporarily mirrored the site to:


http://home.no/chevalier
http://german.leffe.dnsalias.com

Thanks to Swede for the second mirror!
I'm still uploading a part of it to the second server.


As for home.no.net they seem to offer 30 MB, but I already had about 35 MB on it... I'll have to be more careful. That's what the site says:

=========
Gratis hjemmesider
Eget hjemmesideområde på 30 mb
=========

Sounds to me as if they offer 30 MB... ;)

[epere4]

Hi, I anounce that the Spanish project has a new adress and host thanks to Swede.
http://spanish.doom9.org/

More info in the Spanish Thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=148727#post148727)

[Scipio]

This is an old thread, but it is sticky, so I don't bring it up artificially... ;)


I wonder why we link to the translations in a new window (the flags in the top frame). If someone wants to see his language, he doesn't want to see the other website anymore. I see it rather as inner-site linking because it's all doom9 content.

And if someone wants to open a new window, he can press Shift or use his right-mouse button and choose open in new window. It's rather annoying: when jumping from one translation to another, you end up with having 7 windows open (doom9.org + 6 mirrors).

So my suggestion: use _parent for the flags. What do you think?

[Doom9]

well.. I like comparing the different mirrors of my site so I like to have 7 windows open..