Hi all. I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki software. There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface (or so I believe) like month names? Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items that are not included in the namespace? Thanx
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Hi all. I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki software. There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface (or so I believe) like month names? Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items that are not included in the namespace? Thanx
Hello,
As far as I know, they are hard set in the LanguageXX.php, the El one is actually empty and default to the Utf8 one or maybe english.
Can you provide us a list of weekdays name (sunday, monday ..), months names (january, february ...) and month abbreviations (jan, feb ...) in your language ?
A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Hi all. I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki software. There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface (or so I believe) like month names? Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items that are not included in the namespace? Thanx
Hello,
As far as I know, they are hard set in the LanguageXX.php, the El one is actually empty and default to the Utf8 one or maybe english.
Can you provide us a list of weekdays name (sunday, monday ..), months names (january, february ...) and month abbreviations (jan, feb ...) in your language ?
A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.
Then here it goes:
Weekdays starting with Sunday: ??????? ??????? ????? ??????? ?????? ????????? ???????
Months starting with January and abbreviations after the comma! ??????????, ???. ???????????, ????. ???????, ????. ????????, ???. ?????, ??ï?? ???????, ????. ???????, ????. ?????????, ???. ???????????, ????. ?????????, ?????. ?????????, ?????. ??????????, ?????.
Thanks a lot. I am sure it all looks Greek to you (which it is).
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
<snip>
A dev (me for example) can then puts that in the LanguageEl.php, tests it and adds it to the mediawiki software. Then the wikipedia server operators will be able to enable it on the Greek wikipedia.
Then here it goes:
Weekdays starting with Sunday: ??????? ??????? ?????
<snip>
I commited a patch into cvs.
Now that the months have been translated and put in place I realized that for Greek things are not really so simple!! I am sure other languages have the same problems (Spanish?). The problem is that most words in Greek take a different ending depending on the person that is being referred to or talking. So you cannot simply say June (Ioúnios) 15 June (15 Iouníou) I give here the correct greek form in english characters. What it amounts to is that you cannot then do for example do {{CURRENTMONTHDAY}}_{{CURRENTMONTH}} since it will sound and look strange. Unless of course extensive parameters are set up. This makes setting a calendar much more difficult than in the English language. Can somebody offer a suggestion? I am interested in finding what others have done in similar situations. Thankx Andreas
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Hi all. I have been helping for a while to translate the interface of the Greek wikipedia with much success due to the namespace feuture of the wiki software. There are though some things that cannot be translated via this interface (or so I believe) like month names? Can somebody point me to the correct procedures for changing such items that are not included in the namespace? Thanx --
Andreas Kasenides e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy (replace the _at_ above with @)
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Now that the months have been translated and put in place I realized that for Greek things are not really so simple!! I am sure other languages have the same problems (Spanish?). The problem is that most words in Greek take a different ending depending on the person that is being referred to or talking. [...] Can somebody offer a suggestion?
You should probably give us more information on how Greek month names work. You have only told us what does *not* work. I might be able to come up with a technical solution if you explain to me what morphological properties of Greek need to be satisfied in the month names.
Greetings, Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Andreas Kasenides wrote:
Now that the months have been translated and put in place I realized that for Greek things are not really so simple!! I am sure other languages have the same problems (Spanish?). The problem is that most words in Greek take a different ending depending on the person that is being referred to or talking. [...] Can somebody offer a suggestion?
You should probably give us more information on how Greek month names work. You have only told us what does *not* work. I might be able to come up with a technical solution if you explain to me what morphological properties of Greek need to be satisfied in the month names.
There may be cases I'm not covering, but for the one I can immediately see in the interface, the issue is that "day month" type dates use the possessive form of the month name, while month names used by themselves use a simple noun form. Using Latin-character transliterations without accents:
May used as a simple noun is "Maios". You'd use this if you wanted to say "May is a nice month". The possessive form of May (i.e. "May's", or "of May") is "Maiou". You'd use this if you wanted to say "The flowers are the best part of May". Dates use the possessive form, roughly equivalent to the English phrase "15th of May"---"15h Maiou", or simply "15 Maiou"
I'm not sure how to name these as variables with maximum generality. It would help if someone knew of any other languages where month forms change when used in dates versus as simple month names, to make sure all cases are covered. Considering only Greek, it would suffice to have something like (feel free to rename the variables): MonthName -- to use in things like headers (are there any month headers anywhere?) MonthNameInDate - to use as parts of dates, like "15 May"
(Where in many languages, these would be the same.)
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Timwi wrote:
You should probably give us more information on how Greek month names work. You have only told us what does *not* work. I might be able to come up with a technical solution if you explain to me what morphological properties of Greek need to be satisfied in the month names.
There may be cases I'm not covering, but for the one I can immediately see in the interface, the issue is that "day month" type dates use the possessive form of the month name, while month names used by themselves use a simple noun form.
[... etc. ... 'Maios' vs. '5h Maiou']
Ah-ha. I kind of thought so. So why don't you just do this:
- Set the month name to "Maio" - In a sentence like "{{MONTHNAME}} is nice", write "{{MONTHNAME}}s estis bioutiphulos" - Set the date format to "{{DAY}} {{MONTHNAME}}u {{YEAR}}"
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Timwi wrote:
You should probably give us more information on how Greek month names work. You have only told us what does *not* work. I might be able to come up with a technical solution if you explain to me what morphological properties of Greek need to be satisfied in the month names.
There may be cases I'm not covering, but for the one I can immediately see in the interface, the issue is that "day month" type dates use the possessive form of the month name, while month names used by themselves use a simple noun form.
[... etc. ... 'Maios' vs. '5h Maiou']
Ah-ha. I kind of thought so. So why don't you just do this:
- Set the month name to "Maio"
- In a sentence like "{{MONTHNAME}} is nice", write "{{MONTHNAME}}s
estis bioutiphulos"
- Set the date format to "{{DAY}} {{MONTHNAME}}u {{YEAR}}"
Well, unfortunately one part I had left out were the accents, which shift when the word becomes possessive. To take the example from Andreas's email, the simple noun form of June is "Ioúnios", whereas the possessive form is "Iouníou". So it would really need a separate {{MONTHNAMEPOSSESSIVE}} or something of that sort.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Delirium wrote:
There may be cases I'm not covering, but for the one I can immediately see in the interface, the issue is that "day month" type dates use the possessive form of the month name, while month names used by themselves use a simple noun form.
[... etc. ... 'Maios' vs. '5h Maiou']
Ah-ha. I kind of thought so. So why don't you just do this:
- Set the month name to "Maio"
- In a sentence like "{{MONTHNAME}} is nice", write "{{MONTHNAME}}s
estis bioutiphulos"
- Set the date format to "{{DAY}} {{MONTHNAME}}u {{YEAR}}"
Well, unfortunately one part I had left out were the accents, which shift when the word becomes possessive. To take the example from Andreas's email, the simple noun form of June is "Ioúnios", whereas the possessive form is "Iouníou". So it would really need a separate {{MONTHNAMEPOSSESSIVE}} or something of that sort.
OK. Next idea:
(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Iouníou", so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site. (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Iouníou]] would contain "Ioúnios". (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
How's that? Timwi
Timwi wrote:
OK. Next idea:
(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Iouníou", so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site. (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Iouníou]] would contain "Ioúnios". (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
Sounds reasonable to me!
So this requires no code changes then I take it, only a change of the stored months names to the possessive forms, and then creation of the templates at the user level?
I can't type Greek on this computer (or at least haven't figured out how to yet), so I'll wait for Andreas to send the list of possessive names.
-Mark
OK. Next idea:
(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Iouníou", so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site. (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Iouníou]] would contain "Ioúnios". (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
Putting variables in links or template names causes link table corruption. We should have left it disabled.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
OK. Next idea:
(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Iouníou", so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site. (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Iouníou]] would contain "Ioúnios". (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
Putting variables in links or template names causes link table corruption. We should have left it disabled.
Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent these tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a missing line in "What links here", but at least the links table will stop getting corrupted.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent these tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a missing line in "What links here", but at least the links table will stop getting corrupted.
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent these tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a missing line in "What links here", but at least the links table will stop getting corrupted.
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Timwi wrote:
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
-- Tim Starling
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
This is silly. Why don't we just back up 4 posts, and where it says "Can't you put in a little..." do s/you/we/ - or perhaps s/you/one/ which is probably more-or-less what was meant in the first place.
Tim W asks for advice; Tim S says he doesn't know; one, the other, both, or someone else, goes away and tries it.
Problem solved.
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
Tim, I'm very sorry you think of me this way, but I just don't have the time to become an expert just now. My course ends in August; I might become an expert then. I've already installed MediaWiki and I can dive right into it. Until then, however, I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently interested in unpaid volunteer work that I would jeopardise my result.
Greetings, Timwi
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Last time I checked, you had CVS access.
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
A great comment! With a much wider application than for life on the Wiki.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
A great comment! With a much wider application than for life on the Wiki.
Hm. I still don't read Timwi's original comment that way, but there you go. Asking a more experienced member of a team for their opinion before you spend too much time struggling with an implementation is surely the way to efficiency (especially from a team point of view). It's all very well learning from your mistakes, but it's a lot better if you can learn a bit from those of others as well. But anyway, who am I to judge the intentions of others? *shrug*
Rowan Collins [IMSoP] wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
Timwi wrote:
CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p
Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.
A great comment! With a much wider application than for life on the Wiki.
Hm. I still don't read Timwi's original comment that way, but there you go. Asking a more experienced member of a team for their opinion before you spend too much time struggling with an implementation is surely the way to efficiency (especially from a team point of view). It's all very well learning from your mistakes, but it's a lot better if you can learn a bit from those of others as well. But anyway, who am I to judge the intentions of others? *shrug*
My response was to Tim's comments, not Timwi's. Sure some people don't have enough background to move on; with others it's a case of confidence. What I'm mostly criticizing is educational policy that destroys initiative, and fails to validate the child's natural tendency to ask questions and to be confident with his own ideas.
Ec
Let's go back a few posts and I'll try to explain what's going on.
Timwi wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
OK. Next idea:
(1) Set the month names to be the possessive forms, e.g. "Iouníou", so they can be used normally in dates throughout the site. (2) Create thingies in the Template namespace that contain the nominative forms, e.g. [[Template:Nominative-Iouníou]] would contain "Ioúnios". (3) Whenever you need the nominative, instead of {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} write {{Nominative-{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}}.
Putting variables in links or template names causes link table corruption. We should have left it disabled.
Here I said "we should have left it disabled" because I have spent so long on "custom message" and template features that I've become rather bitter about them. It seems as if a large proportion of the total time I've spent on MediaWiki has been on templates, and I don't even agree with the way they are being used in Wikipedia. I think they make editing difficult. But here I am, implementing them anyway. Why? I don't know, popular demand I guess. Anyway, I'm sick of them and I have no interest in fixing bugs or adding more related features.
Can't you put in a little "if" at the right spot that will prevent these tags from adding anything to the links table? Yes, we'll have a missing line in "What links here", but at least the links table will stop getting corrupted.
Timwi's priorities are different to my priorities. What I work on in MediaWiki depends on what is rewarding for me, not what is rewarding for him.
Before I became a developer, I also found that what was important to me was different to the priorities of the existing developers. But instead of trying to annoy the developers into making me happy, I decided to do it myself. I see this as a much more positive activity.
Timwi has made 500 edits and 25 mailing list posts in the last week, and he tells us he has no time. I think he just has different priorities. Learning how to write MediaWiki code is not a full time job. It might be challenging, but what is life without challenges?
-- Tim Starling
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