[Bf-docboard] Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 138, Issue 2

[Francesco Siddi]

Hi Ivan,

1) There's a discussion on dev.b.o about changing the format of some images.
2) Using sphinx string translation system, it might be possible to wrap images into translatable strings and handle them differently into other languages. I'm not sure it's a good (and doable) idea though.

Best,
Francesco

On 15 August 2016 at 16:05:06, Ivan Paulos Tomé (greylica at gmail.com) wrote:

Hi !
Here is Ivan Paulos Tome. (greylica).
Sorry for the long e-mail, seems to me as necessary.

I'm not so active nowadays, but I have some plans to get back.
It's up to the team !

There are some issues I would like to point about the manual:
( Those are my opinions, based on day by day Blender usage)

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//

1-) Image format:

PNG format  is better than JPG for us, and I think the conversion to a lower quality JPG image makes some of them hard to read. At the same time, can be used to force writers / publishers to update them all with newer images.

* Solution:
- Let writers update them all with newer PNG images and make it standard. It's hard, but not impossible.

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//

2-)  Translations.

It is a fact that the bug reports, GNU/GPL softwares, as well as Blender development and its related manual bases need to use a common language, and English is the interoperability language chosen by nearly 100% of the developers all around the world. The same rules are applied to the Blender Network, but we can't force all communities and their users to learn  and / or teach English language first, and Blender later.

In some parts of the manual, it was written that the use of the localized versions and their respective scrrenshots of Blender is "very, very, very" discouraged...
In some communities (mostly with those ones with RTL languages, and / or another character typing set ), this is forcing some translators and writers to try to find their own local solutions outside of Blender Foundation and Blender Institute.

The Blender teaching results are the main problem here. Let me explain why:

Once you have few persons translating Blender user interface terms and their respective screenshots to use them at the manual, you are also indirectly discouraging manual translations, because the terms and their respective significance won't be a target for study. And since I knew Blender, we have always the same challenge:
Few people to help with documentations and translations.

In an extreme situation (I saw this personally when I was knewing a person nearly a third party school...), we will end up with some Blender "teachers" that are newbies in 3D saying "I don't know what's AO, but it "beautifies" the image a lot, so enable it..." to students.

* Solution:
- Free manual translators and user interface translators to use their respective language translated screenshot and localized versions of Blender.
- Ask translators to point their users to use English language whenever they need to communicate with BF, BI and artists when using Blender Network, and invite users to learn English to better integrate themselves in the Blender community, explaining "As for now, the majority of resources you will find about Blender are created in English...", but giving them one more freedom that they didn't have before.

*A translated software and its respective resources represents more freedom, not less. Don't like ? Don't use, but now, you have freedom to choose, because at least it exists...
---
Important:
When I was working in blenderwiki, I have developed a concecpt of "hybrid" terms to help users. For example:

- Caixa circundante ("Bounding Box"):
- A caixa circundante serve basicamente para referenciar as medidas máximas do objeto pelas linhas paralelas do ambiente espacial 3D com relação as coordenadas globais, representando seu volume total no espaço global. Esta caixa só referencia uma delimitação quando é usada como um domínio de simulação ou nos casos em que esteja habilitada para colisões das simulações físicas.
---

- Rewrite those parts of the manual to reflect the news, and encourage users to became someone in Blender ecosystem again !

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//

Positive vibrations from Brazil.
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