Multilingual posts

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Glenn
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Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

Hello all. I'm new to Serendipity and I'm trying to get to grips with the multilingual functions.
Has anyone written a tutorial or something similar to show how to create multilingual posts?
I have installed the multilingual plugin, and I see that I can have translated titles, such as {{!en}}English title{{--}}{{!fr}}Titre Française{{--}}, but the Intro and content sections don't reliably work if I do something like :
{{!en}}
English text{{--}}
{{!fr}}
Contenu Française{{--}}
What am I doing wrong, or what do I need to do in order to be able to write my posts with both languages present in the same post ('cos I use lots of diagrams and pictures and I can't stand having to add everything a second time...)
Thanks, in advance,
Glenn
Update (several hours later...)
Well, I've sort-of got it working, but now I understand the grumbling that a few people have raised about trying to use the multilingual functions in 'real life' : logged-on with a browser that is also configured for multi-lingual use. Instead of just switching between two languages (in my case English & French), the administration environment gets mixed-up between one of the languages and a default language. If you don't watch-out, you loose changes because the default language isn't the REAL language... It's not very easy to describe, but it's VERY very annoying. I've just lost about 1hours work due to this problem. The only workaround I can see for the moment is to only work with one language at a time... But it's defeating the object.

A tutorial would be nice. Or do I submit one myself from what I've understood so far ?
Glenn
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

Glenn wrote: A tutorial would be nice. Or do I submit one myself from what I've understood so far ?
OK, please help by answering this last question : what format should I use to submit a tutorial (in english), and where should I send it ? I think I've cracked most of the issues.
Glenn
yellowled
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by yellowled »

Glenn wrote:what format should I use to submit a tutorial (in english), and where should I send it ?
There is no real format to post/collect s9y tutorials. Depending on the length, the forums might not be ideal, although I think people have posted tutorials to the forums in the past as well. You could just post it to your own blog if you like and post a link to it here.

If you'd like to reach a broad audience, you might as well post it to the s9y homepage/wiki. I haven't used that in ages myself, so I'm not sure about the required format. Garvin?

YL
Glenn
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

yellowled wrote:If you'd like to reach a broad audience, you might as well post it to the s9y homepage/wiki. I haven't used that in ages myself, so I'm not sure about the required format. Garvin?
YL
er... I haven't seen a wiki page anywhere ... :?
yellowled
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by yellowled »

Glenn wrote:I haven't seen a wiki page anywhere ... :?
The whole s9y.org (see “Homepage” in the menu) is technically a wiki, it's just not called a wiki as it's not an open one (hence pinging Garvin because you might need access to add content to it) . :)

YL
garvinhicking
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by garvinhicking »

Hi!

I'd be happy with any format you'd like to provide. "Plain text" would be the best, and embed images with links to a service like imgur if you'd need that; and you could surround code text with \

Code: Select all

...\
tags?

I'd love to then put this on the www.s9y.org technical documentation, and of course link it here :)

Regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
Glenn
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

OK, I'll work on that in // with getting my blog working.
Er, there's still one thing I haven't got to grips with : it's the language choices that are presented next to each post. I seem to remember seeing another post about that, I'll try to find it.
Thanks,
Glenn
Glenn
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

Well, sorry - no documentation yet. The plain fact is this plugin IS NOT RELIABLE FOR ME.
I'm *VERY* angry at the moment because I'm wasting time correcting things instead of doing real work. I'll try and describe what's happening.
---
I'm english, living in France. I leave my choice of language on my 'development' PC as English. The admin interface is also in English.
I write my default language posts in English. Once the post is OK it's saved as the default. Then I choose French and I translate the text into French and I save it.
So far, so good. If I use another PC to look at the blog everything is fine - I see the two languages.
I want to modify a post, I connect to the admin interface (English), click on Edit for the post in question - the language selector says "default" BUT THE TEXT IS THE FRENCH TEXT. I'm so fluent in written French that I don't necessarily notice - I make my change, save the post : LOSING MY ORIGINAL ENGLISH POST.
PLEASE PLEASE (OK I'll stop shouting) : please have another look at this plug-in because otherwise I'm taking my blog back down, deleting Sernendipity and I'll do something else. :evil:
The blog : [url]http::/bosc-technologie.fr/blog/index.php[/url]
garvinhicking
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by garvinhicking »

Hi!

I'm really sorry for that, I can feel your pain. :(

The problem is, the multilanguage plugin really is complex, but many bloggers don't often really individually translate their blogs, so the plugins user base is quite small and also quite specific.

If we can get the problem/bug/issue to get reproducible, we can surely try to do something about that. I figure that the problem could be that on the other PC where you edit the text, the browser's language settings are different? If the "browser language detection" is enabled in Serendipity, this actually overrides the current language - and the current language is always what Serendipity displays as "default" language. It currently actually relies on the blog editors to have the same setup of their language whenever they edit an article, else it would lead to your problem. Do you think this is the case currently?

Maybe an alternate proposal might keep your sanity, and instead of using the multilingual feature, maybe use a more "dumbed down" approach. You could create one blog post category for each language, and then create distinct individual entries for each category. To then switch from one entry to another translation, you would simply link to the entry in that language, and append those links to the end of your entries... just an idea, I'm only trying to think pragmatic and not further annoy you. ;))

Best regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
Glenn
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Joined: Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:01 am

Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Glenn »

Hi Garvin, thanks for taking time to reply. The language setting of my browser is a good lead : it's french, by default... I'll have to rethink my development PC setup and see if I can't have a machine with *just* english on it. I'll try it over the weekend.
For your 'workaround' I had started working like that before I discovered the multi-lingual plugin. But it's quite a pain to translate that way - it is nice to be able to just change the text around the already layed-out post. (like the light-dimmer post : quite long to setup, but the translation only took a couple of minutes).
I'm calmer now, I'll work it through over the weekend. Thanks.
Glenn
Huhu
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Huhu »

Hello!
Any news with a tutorial? I Also would love to use the Multilingual Entries plug-in. Would feel safer with a guide, though.
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Timbalu
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Joined: Sun May 02, 2004 3:04 pm

Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Timbalu »

Huhu wrote:Hello!
Any news with a tutorial? I Also would love to use the Multilingual Entries plug-in. Would feel safer with a guide, though.
Well, lets say: "Its in work"! :) (Hopefully!)
Over the past two days I was trying to understand the benefits and possibilities of this plugin. I found some bugs and inconsistencies, which will immediately submit to Spartacus when some remaining questions and possible bugs have been solved. I also added some more text to the documentation file to get users on their way with multilingual usage blogs and to not fall into the same trap as Glenn.

It is not that easy to get a complete overview of what has to be done or has to get fixed, or is just a matter of wrong usage. I am a little stuck with these issues for the moment.
  • + see fixed list +
  • Is there more...?
PS. I would also love to have freetags react on multilingual settings. Any ideas welcome!
I could imagine to take a similar database method approach as for entries for the entries freetags. Could that be done?

Edit: fixed (...or near by)
  • Posted sidebar lang selection influences backend lang...
  • The "Force full language switch" option has no effect in 2.0x
  • In non-tag mode, the entries $head_title in banner does not change its language, when switching the lang per entry or per sidebar languagechooser. (Very strange though!)
  • The search needs to exclude non-default language entryproperties checks from the list
Regards,
Ian

Serendipity Styx Edition and additional_plugins @ https://ophian.github.io/ @ https://github.com/ophian
Timbalu
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Re: Multilingual posts

Post by Timbalu »

À votre service! Version 2.21 on Spartacus.
Regards,
Ian

Serendipity Styx Edition and additional_plugins @ https://ophian.github.io/ @ https://github.com/ophian
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