[FM Discuss] Portals for Russian and Spanish manuals?

[Edward Cherlin]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 06:33, Daniel James
<daniel.james at sourcefabric.org> wrote:
> Hi Edward,
>
>> There appears to be room for 16 language
>> buttons on the top bar. We know that we will have
>>
[list snipped]
>>
>> and others within a few months of releasing the new translation
>> software, and somewhere between 50 and 100, comparable to Sugar and
>> various Linux distributions, within a year. So it is not too soon to
>> start thinking about the next language UI.
>
> I see your point, the design doesn't scale. Putting the language buttons
> down the side might help in the short term. This is easily done by
> changing the CSS. Beyond that, we might need a tag cloud like the front
> page of http://www.wikipedia.org/

Good idea.

>> or be on a pull-down menu
>
> The problem with that is if your language is hidden on a pull-down menu,
> you might not find it. It needs to be up-front and obvious.

How about starting with buttons, and putting the menu below

English
French
Spanish
Arabic
Chinese
MORE -->[long list]

> Also,
> pull-down menus aren't good with more than 10 or 20 entries, they don't
> scale well either.
>
>> perhaps with
>> regional submenus.
>
> Mixing language with geography is also problematic because of colonial
> languages like English, French and Portuguese. For example if I speak
> French but I am in Africa, I might not expect to find my manual under
> European -> French.

We could have a submenu for the major international languages, including

English (UK, Commonwealth, US)
French (Francophonie)
Spanish (Spain, Latin America and more)
Russian (Former Soviet Union)
Arabic (Middle East and North Africa)
Chinese Traditional (Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, others)
Swahili (Kenya, Tanzania, others) [when the time comes]

and list the rest geographically by the countries where they are
official or native.

Perhaps we can refine this design further. Unless someone has a better idea.

> Cheers!
>
> Daniel
>



-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks