[Bf-docboard] Manual Structure project finished - request for template translation!

Thu Aug 17 03:20:06 CEST 2006

Hey Matt,

I was wondering where in the manual I should start working on. I can see 
the Modelling/Objects/Selecting object section contains the old docs and 
it appears that sections of it are to be split or dispersed among the 
sub link; for example "Selecting objects" appears to be in-progress with 
duplicate stuff. I saw your notice about being complete with the 
restructuring but was wondering what the status with the contents are.

Where would you suggest I start?

-Will.

Matt Ebb wrote:
> Although there are few loose ends, I'm calling this project complete. 
> Some articles I haven't touched, since they were so misleadingly out 
> of date it wasn't worth the time, but for the most part things should 
> be spick and span and anything that I find left over, I'll continue to 
> fix up along the way.
>
> Today I added info on the reference template to the style guide 
> ( http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Meta/Style_Guide ) and the 
> templates page ( http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Meta/Templates ).
>
> There's one more thing that I could use a hand with though. I 
> originally built into the reference template the ability to use 
> different languages! This means that, for example, the template can be 
> used on a Japanese language page and instead of the template saying 
> "Menu" in the box it will say "メニュー", and so on for the other 
> languages, which is of course much nicer. Writers just need to pass in 
> the two-letter language code that they want to use, instead of "en" 
> when they call the template.
>
> Now it just needs the translations. The only language other than 
> English that I know anything much of is Japanese, so even though we 
> have no Japanese pages, I've edited the RefBox template 
> ( http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php?title=Template:RefBox ) with 
> example text in Japanese to show how to add a translation. It's quite 
> simple - when you edit the page, it's just a matter of copying the "| 
> ja=メニュー" lines and pasting them underneath with the new language.
>
> If any of you that speak languages other than English can help out 
> editing the template translating these, it would be great! I'm happy 
> to help or answer any questions about it too.
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
> On 03/08/2006, at 00:23 AM, Matt Ebb wrote:
>
>> Ok!
>>
>> I'm pretty much done with all the big changes *phew*.
>>
>> There's a bit of cleanup work to do (straggler template-ifying/moving 
>> tutorials/writer's guidelines) that I'll try and take care of 
>> tomorrow, but for the most part, it's pretty complete. Of course the 
>> wiki isn't (and may never be), so happy writing, all! :)
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Matt
>>
>>
>>
>> On 02/08/2006, at 14:28 PM, Matt Ebb wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks! No other feedback, so I'm going to go ahead right now :) 
>>> Will mail again when it's finished.
>>>
>>> Have fun at siggraph!
>>>
>>> Matt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 29/07/2006, at 10:52 AM, Will DeVore wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey Matt,
>>>>
>>>> IMHO, I think you are doing a great service to the docs.
>>>>
>>>> I like the idea of splitting off the tutorials and your proposed 
>>>> restructure looks good. The BoxGuidelines template looks easy to 
>>>> deal with. I also agree with the removal of the page title designators.
>>>>
>>>> I look forward to picking back-up when your project and the other 
>>>> BSoDs are completed.
>>>>
>>>> Have you thought about how to handle versions between Blender. 
>>>> Sometimes Blender changes quite drastically. What about having some 
>>>> sort of filter that kinda morphs the document according to the 
>>>> version of Blender you are interested. I think of it much like CSS 
>>>> for web pages. Perhaps there could be a list box or something at 
>>>> the top for choosing the version where certain sections may appear 
>>>> or disappear or may even change. We could use templates to control 
>>>> what docs go with which versions.
>>>>
>>>> Just food for thought....
>>>>
>>>> Off to Siggraph now. ;P
>>>>
>>>> -Will
>>>>
>>>> Matt Ebb wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> You may remember me posting about a project I've been working on 
>>>>> alongside the BSoD, to improve the information design and 
>>>>> structure of the reference manual. You can probably find previous 
>>>>> emails in the archives.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, I've *finally* just about finished the enormous task of 
>>>>> updating the various manual pages in the manual to use the 
>>>>> consistent reference information template 
>>>>> (http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Broken/ReferenceBoxGuidelines) 
>>>>> - there are a couple that haven't been converted yet, I'm waiting 
>>>>> for the next stage of this project. Im already very happy with the 
>>>>> results so far, things look a lot clearer and nicer.
>>>>>
>>>>> The next bit remaining in the project in my proposal ( 
>>>>> http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Broken/SummerOfDocs2006Restructure 
>>>>> ) is tweaking the higher level structure of the manual, and 
>>>>> splitting off the tutorials into a revamped tutorial section. I 
>>>>> decided to wait until I'd been through all the manual pages 
>>>>> already to do this, since now after reading and editing just about 
>>>>> every page, I have a very good understanding of the state of the 
>>>>> manual, what is missing, and what should be tweaked. 
>>>>> I've given it some thought, referenced the old discussions and 
>>>>> have written a proposed, comprehensive TOC here: 
>>>>> http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Broken/ManualTOC . The 
>>>>> idea is to have another tutorials TOC with top level containers 
>>>>> that mirror those in the reference manual, both crosslinked (as 
>>>>> you can see in my page). This keeps the reference manual clean and 
>>>>> focused, but also allows nice cross-referencing. Notable 
>>>>> differences between my TOC and the current one are:
>>>>>
>>>>> * I've included yet-to-be-written placeholder titles based on 
>>>>> information I found was missing from the manual. Some of them 
>>>>> (such as node docs) are already elsewhere on the wiki and just 
>>>>> need to be copied over & consistent-ified. I also think it's 
>>>>> worthwhile to keep placeholders on the TOC page, since although it 
>>>>> looks less 'professional' (the manual is hardly at a professional 
>>>>> level now anyway), it shows people what needs to be written, and 
>>>>> encourages contribution there.
>>>>>
>>>>> * I've tweaked some names, and removed all the "/PartIII/" etc. 
>>>>> designators from the page titles, for a few reasons.
>>>>>  a) They're unnecessary - who cares if it's part 5 or 6, the 
>>>>> content is what counts
>>>>>  b) It makes it harder to crosslink to other pages, instead of 
>>>>> just intuitively writing [[Manual/Subsurf]] if I want to link to 
>>>>> the subsurf page, I have to go and hunt down the section number 
>>>>> too in order to make my link
>>>>>  c) It makes the ordering of chapters inflexible, since it means 
>>>>> all new chapters (such as one on compositing) have to be added at 
>>>>> the end of the manual, to prevent changing all the links around. 
>>>>> I'm happy to take care of moving current pages to the new titles, 
>>>>> without '/Part/' (with auto link redirection of course).
>>>>>  (btw, the black text in parentheses is for description now, and 
>>>>> won't stay).
>>>>>
>>>>> So anyway, I thought I'd put this up for comments for a couple of 
>>>>> days, and then go ahead and finish the job! Let me know what you 
>>>>> think.
>>>>>
>>>>> cheers
>>>>>
>>>>> Matt
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------
>>>>> Matt Ebb • matt at mke3.net <mailto:matt at mke3.net> • http://mke3.net
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Matt Ebb • matt at mke3.net • http://mke3.net
>
>
>
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