[Bf-docboard] localized wiki manual: status report / ideas

[marco ardito]

Hi all,

I am maintaing a PDF version of the english wiki (see 
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Introduction/Downloads).
Recently a user asked me to make a spanish version (he was from mexico): 
he said english was not an option for him, so I tried, even if the ES 
wiki manual is far from be complete/up to date. Anyway, it could be 
useful to him.

In the past I also tried with a Czech wiki manual version, but that to 
was really not complete/up to date.

Since I have an automatic conversion script, I always had in mind to 
make PDF for other languages too (it could be scripted to make all lang 
in a single run, really) but even for my language (IT) I always have the 
impression that it's not updated as much as it should. Or maybe only 
some parts... But perhaps other langs?

Trying to understand how and how much existing localized wiki versions 
are, I found that's a really huge task, as there are no specific tools 
to achieve an overview of the update status. So, I had to create a 
script that compares the available versions, taking the english one as 
reference ( I already reported here before).

I recently updated the search and would like to share some findings:
- From what I can see, the 5 "most" up to date localized wikis are the 
JA, ET, RO, DE, ES one.
- The best one is the Japanese which still lacks "only" 190 of the 643 
english wiki pages, ET misses 263, RO 377, the others are worst...
- Many localized wikis have pages that are not (or no more) in the 
english wiki: many times this happened because (opposed to wiki 
translation guidelines) some author used localized strings in the wiki 
manual urls... this could be easy to address: it's just the page url.
- Two localized wiki have totally wrong links eg:
 > page http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:LT/2.6/Manual
 > has all links made for "2.5" like 
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:LT/2.5/Manual/Introduction
- I have also automated way to compare last modification of any page of 
the wiki, so to be able to (hypotetically) monitor which pages need to 
be updated after corresponding main wiki (english) are updated...  up to 
now I only checked main pages (TOCs), seven of which show some recent 
love...
 > EN 24 March 2014
 > ES 5    March    2014
 > IT 24    March    2014
 > JA 6    January    2014
 > KO 27    February    2014
 > PT 23    March    2014
 > RO 18    February    2014
 > RU 14    April    2014

I wonder it there could be a place on the wiki itself  to share 
comparative info like those, and improved, to get an overall view of the 
wiki translation status and update, so to help also who wants to improve 
a localized wiki manual to make it more "up to date". The best could be 
some mediawiki plugin or something, but I could also upload the results 
of my findings on a specific wiki section, maybe... afaik , there 's 
nothing like that.

I really like the "wiki way" for documentation but for such a huge 
project, and for all those languages... some tool is needed, or at least 
more info, imho.

Ideas? Suggestions? Alternatives?

-- 
*Marco*


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