IRC office hours/Office hours 2012-08-15

Day Date Time Location With Topic(s)
Wednesday 2012-08-15 16:30 UTC until 17:30 UTC #wikimedia-officeconnect Localisation team Updates on Universal Language Selector and Language teams. Q&A on any topic related to localisation.

(Timestamps are in IST)

(09:59:12) srikanthlogic: Welcome to the Localisation team office hours of August 2012
(09:59:19) aharoni left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 245 seconds).
(09:59:28) aude: hi
(09:59:42) srikanthlogic: Before we start, let me introduce myself, I am Srikanth L (User:Logicwiki), recently joined the i18n team as internationalization and localization outreach / QA Engineer.
(09:59:58) siebrand: srikanthlogic: Welcome! It's so great to have you! I feel less stressed already :)
(10:00:16) gwicke [~gabriel@wikimedia/gwicke] entered the room.
(10:00:20) srikanthlogic: siebrand: Thank you!
(10:00:32) morgkj [~chatzilla@wikimedia/Morgankevinj] entered the room.
(10:00:45) srikanthlogic: I shall be acting as technical liaison and hope to work closely with you all in improving language support for your langauge.
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(10:01:19) srikanthlogic: We will be holding office hours every third Wednesday of the month to make things a little more predictable.
(10:01:42) srikanthlogic: This meeting lasts about an hour and will end at 17:30 UTC.
(10:02:12) srikanthlogic: I'll give some updates with news and topics for this meeting first.
(10:02:30) srikanthlogic: After that, we'll hopefully have a great Q&A session.
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(10:02:55) srikanthlogic: Please hold your questions until after the introduction.
(10:02:56) aude: ok
(10:03:06) aharoni [~aharoni@di8-36142.dialin.huji.ac.il] entered the room.
(10:03:17) srikanthlogic: If you want to ask questions now, please do ask them in a private message to me.
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(10:03:56) ***aude curious how many people are here for office hours vs. just here all the time?
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(10:04:06) siebrand: aude: Buncha lurkers!
(10:04:13) aude: heh
(10:04:54) srikanthlogic: Many of our team members are present today, so we're ready for loads of interaction!
(10:04:56) srikanthlogic: The members of localisation team who are around are Nikerabbit (Niklas), aharoni (Amir), pginer (Pau), alolita, siebrand, santhosh and srikanthlogic
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(10:06:00) srikanthlogic: We have a team page at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Localisation_team with photos (which are slightly outdated!).
(10:06:31) srikanthlogic: Our topics for today are:
(10:06:34) srikanthlogic: 1. Universal language selector
(10:06:36) srikanthlogic: 2. Project Milkshake
(10:06:38) srikanthlogic: 3. Optimization of translation workflows
(10:07:01) aude: can you tell us about number 2? or shall we go in order?
(10:07:15) Nikerabbit: in order
(10:07:25) aude: ok :)
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(10:07:45) ***siebrand likes Project Milshake; hates milkshakes.
(10:08:07) srikanthlogic: A brief Introduction about Universal Language Selector for those who are not aware - This is a MediaWiki extension to assist users to select a language from a large set of languages and configure language related settings.
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(10:09:23) srikanthlogic: As you know, Wikimedia projects are localized and available in ~280+ languages and the intention of this project is to make choosing the language easy.
(10:09:39) aude: btw, we have a demo of ULS on our wikidata test site now
(10:09:40) aude: http://wikidata-test-repo.wikimedia.de/wiki/Main_Page
(10:09:57) ***aude not sure if we configured it totally correct
(10:10:01) Yaron [~Lee@cpe-68-175-122-145.nyc.res.rr.com] entered the room.
(10:10:12) santhosh: aude: great!
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(10:11:07) siebrand: sandbox.translatewiki.net is running the latest version. Usually we're running master's HEAD on translatewiki.net, too, but we're currently integrating web fonts, and there's some unfinished functionality.
(10:11:11) srikanthlogic: aude: A version might with fewer bug fixes be at https://translatewiki.net/
(10:11:24) dcrochet: ok, if I understand good : The language seclect allow allbody (and most for unregisted users) to choose the interface language ?
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(10:11:50) santhosh: dcrochet: yes.
(10:11:57) srikanthlogic: dcrochet: yes, anyone including anonymous users
(10:12:38) aharoni: dcrochet: currently it's for interface language, but it will have more functions in the future.
(10:13:04) srikanthlogic: People can search any language by typing in their own language
(10:13:05) dcrochet: ok, and for registered user, a direct link instead of passing throught the preference interface.
(10:13:06) ***aude likes how it makes it easy to discover new and interesting languages
(10:13:56) aharoni: dcrochet: exactly.
(10:14:12) tyteen4a03: there seems to be 2 文言 (legacy/old chinese) and 粵語 (Cantonese) options
(10:14:13) srikanthlogic: Users can search using language name written in _any_ script, using the script name (eg: Devanagari) or use ISO 639 codes.
(10:14:45) siebrand: Please be advised: This is an early alpha version. We know stuff is missing; some dependencies still have to be developed.
(10:15:03) srikanthlogic: Current version of ULS supports searching using autocomplete, and tolerating typos (fuzzy search)
(10:15:15) siebrand: It is functional, but please notify us about any quirks through https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org
(10:15:18) MF-W: is it inteded to make possible to enter any language name in any language? (like searching for Spanish by entering its Polish name?)
(10:15:23) aude: it's probably one of those things missing, but i can start typing "francia" in arabic and it works
(10:15:27) santhosh: MF-W: yes!
(10:15:38) aude: but doesn't work if i start typing "jabonia" (japanese) in arabic
(10:15:45) srikanthlogic: MF-W: yes, if the CLDR data for your langauge is upto date :)
(10:16:00) Nikerabbit: our language name translations have lots of holes indeed
(10:16:06) aude: is the intention for it to allow typing any language in arabic (or any script?)
(10:16:09) aude: Nikerabbit: ok
(10:16:21) Nikerabbit: aude: as long as we have the data
(10:16:29) ***aude expects wikidata might be able to help fill in the translations at some point soonish :)
(10:16:36) srikanthlogic: It is also possible to find a language using navigating to the region groups using a map.
(10:16:38) santhosh: We depend on CLDR for language name translations
(10:16:46) aude: santhosh: ok
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(10:16:53) aude: does CLDR have missing data?
(10:16:57) Nikerabbit: a lot
(10:17:03) aude: ok
(10:17:17) Nikerabbit: and cumbersome interface which makes submitting missing data hard
(10:17:26) ***aude nods
(10:17:43) srikanthlogic: We wrote about latest updates to ULS and project MilkShake in our latest blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/08/14/internationalisation-language-selector-milkshake/
(10:18:59) srikanthlogic: any questions on ULS?
(10:19:15) aharoni: aude, the data that we have in Arabic is more or less this:
(10:19:16) aharoni: Abkhazian
(10:19:20) aharoni: (sorry)
(10:19:22) aharoni: http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/summary/ar.html
(10:19:27) aude: aharoni: thanks
(10:19:36) dcrochet: Ho yes, i type the language in french and it found the language even if the french term do not exist
(10:19:38) aharoni: search there for Abkhazian, and the rest of languages come after it
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(10:21:07) planemad [0e604f04@gateway/web/freenode/ip.14.96.79.4] entered the room.
(10:21:12) srikanthlogic: As of now ULS is intended to select the interface language, we might consider using it for interwiki links after sometime
(10:21:14) siebrand: MF-W: اليابانية does give a hit in ULS (which is the CLDR entry for Japanese)
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(10:21:27) aude: aharoni: so it sometimes requires typing the "al-ja...."
(10:21:30) aude: sometimes not
(10:21:32) siebrand: What's also nice, is that you're allowed to make small typos in language names.
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(10:21:34) aude: "francia" works
(10:21:40) siebrand: It has a fuzzy match feature.
(10:22:00) ***planemad waves. just made an intercity commute
(10:22:15) ***aude will test it some more
(10:22:27) srikanthlogic: planemad: welcome
(10:22:46) siebrand: If you for example type "germain", Deutsch will remain the only suggestion.
(10:22:47) srikanthlogic: We understand that language selection is a generic problem among software application especially in multi-lingual applications.
(10:23:01) ***aude nods
(10:23:48) srikanthlogic: And when we develop a solution for that, we make sure that it is very generic and reusable for any web application.
(10:23:52) dcrochet: hum maybe a bug : I click to change a language, and i click on the cross at upperright the popup close and open an another "language setting" and if i want to close it, it reopen "select language" popup. Noway to go out of this infernal_circle
(10:24:23) Nikerabbit: dcrochet: known issue in latest development version
(10:24:27) dcrochet: :-)
(10:24:37) aharoni: dcrochet: It's supposed to be fixed already.
(10:24:42) siebrand: CTRL+R :)
(10:24:47) aharoni: the development of ULS is progressing very fast now.
(10:24:59) ***aude curious that there's canadian and british english but not american english
(10:25:05) siebrand: The core is at https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/project:mediawiki/extensions/UniversalLanguageSelector,n,z
(10:25:24) siebrand: aude: US English is "English". It's the new imperialism.
(10:25:28) srikanthlogic: We avoid dependencies to mediawiki platform as possible so that its generic and can be used across
(10:25:33) aude: siebrand: ok ;)
(10:27:22) srikanthlogic: The current version only allows to chose a language. In the coming days, we are working on adding Language tools support along with ULS
(10:28:02) dcrochet: when the project will be out_of_major_bug, you call to use it in international wiki (commons, incubator, betawikiversity, wikisource and other) (by a call in the each village_pump) ?
(10:28:21) srikanthlogic: This will include Narayam and Webfonts integration
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(10:29:14) srikanthlogic: The next item on the agenda is Project Milkshake
(10:29:33) dcrochet: i say that because for project, it make better to "welcome" new contributors
(10:30:38) siebrand: As for deployment plans for ULS: We have some serious caching issues to work out.
(10:30:48) siebrand: (this is for deployment on a WIkimedia site)
(10:31:04) siebrand: We must speak to ops, before we can set realistic expectations.
(10:31:25) siebrand: We have meetings planned during and after the WMF all staff meetings in the beginning of September.
(10:31:28) siebrand: -
(10:31:35) aude: it's going to be an issue for wikidata too
(10:32:13) srikanthlogic: Project Milkshake aims to make generic jQuery libraries of existing i18n tools/libraries which i18n team has built for Mediawiki
(10:33:27) siebrand: aude: what will be an issue for WIkidata?
(10:33:38) siebrand: aude: If ULS can be deployed, or caching?
(10:33:51) aude: siebrand: that we choose to use ULS
(10:34:15) srikanthlogic: jquery.i18n is a library to provide full i18n framework that supports parameter replacements and grammar-, plural-, and gender-dependent translations; https://github.com/santhoshtr/jquery.i18n
(10:34:16) siebrand: aude: you'll be able to use ULS, irregardless of the complete spec being implemented. You only use a part of it.
(10:34:26) aude: siebrand: suer
(10:34:28) aude: sure
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(10:35:06) siebrand: aude: there's a meeting planned tomorrow at 11:30 or so with Denny and others form your side, and Santhosh and me from our team.
(10:35:14) ***aude nods
(10:35:14) siebrand: (CEST)
(10:35:28) srikanthlogic: jquery.webfonts is a library to provide webfonts support, developed from WebFonts extension; https://github.com/santhoshtr/jquery.webfonts
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(10:36:07) srikanthlogic: jquery.ime is a library to provide input methods in the browser, developed from Narayam extension; https://github.com/santhoshtr/jquery.ime
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(10:36:44) srikanthlogic: ULS will also be soon available as jquery.uls after some cleanup
(10:37:23) marktraceur: srikanthlogic: Is there a reason those are on GitHub?
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(10:37:56) srikanthlogic: marktraceur: They are not specific to Mediawiki / Wikimedia, Github gives wide visibility
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(10:38:14) srikanthlogic: marktraceur: They will soon be moved under Wikimedia Github account
(10:38:24) marktraceur: srikanthlogic: As opposed to other public git hosts, then?
(10:39:02) siebrand: "other public git hosts"?
(10:39:04) aude: it's a tradeoff i think between making it easy for others to contribute
(10:39:10) aude: and having things on gerrit
(10:39:15) Nikerabbit: marktraceur: do you have a counter proposal? :)
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(10:39:33) Nikerabbit: github seems to be what "everyone" is using, including some other WMF repos too
(10:39:53) marktraceur: siebrand, Nikerabbit: Gitorious is my favorite, and it's free software, which seems to me a little better for WMF purposes (even if the project isn't technically tied to WMF)
(10:40:03) srikanthlogic: The ULS extension will be using these new Milkshake libraries and we plan to phase out Narayam and WebFonts extension once ULS is in deployable state
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(10:40:33) siebrand: marktraceur: If the other WIkimedia repos move, we'll move with then. I am not interested in discussing that. I just need a solution, and we have one readily available.
(10:40:54) ***marktraceur has heard that before :)
(10:41:32) marktraceur: Right, question answered, thanks
(10:41:37) srikanthlogic: keep your questions coming on Milkshake, while I move to next item on the agenda which is about Translate UX improvements
(10:41:43) siebrand: Ref: "Gerrit alternatives", in which I'm also not participating.
(10:42:21) srikanthlogic: pginer and planemad have been working on making Translate extension more friendlier
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(10:42:56) marktraceur: siebrand: I think a separate issue, since this isn't a WMF/MW project, it's supposed to be independent to some extent
(10:43:18) srikanthlogic: pginer / planemad: you want to update about your recent work ?
(10:43:29) planemad: yup. the current focus is on improving the ux of the following three tasks:
(10:43:44) planemad: 1) New translator registration
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(10:43:58) planemad: 2) Finding and fixing an incorrect translation
(10:44:10) planemad: 3) The actual translation workflow
(10:44:10) siebrand: marktraceur: I use both. Github is just bigger and more easily available at the moment; as explained, I'm not in need of a definitive analysis.
(10:44:45) pginer: Since we are following a user-centered process, we started by observing users making use of the current tools, defining the scenarios to support and ideating possible solutions.
(10:44:47) planemad: we have a page on mediawiki going on this outlining our progress http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Translation_UX
(10:44:53) siebrand: marktraceur: Well, WMF resources are working on Project Milkshake components, and MediaWiki will be using them, so it is related to WMF/MW. We just hope that's not where it stops.
(10:45:47) planemad: we have defined user test scenarios for the three activities as well as target test personas here http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Translation_UX/Design_feedback_1
(10:45:56) marktraceur: siebrand: I'm sure I could have a long drawn-out conversation about this, but it's probably neither the time nor the place
(10:46:10) ***siebrand agrees.
(10:46:26) siebrand: marktraceur: feel free to start it at engineering@
(10:46:42) planemad: we have prepared interactive prototypes for these test scenarios and are going to commence user testing tomorrow
(10:46:56) pginer: Anyone can volunteer for participation in the tests at here
(10:47:11) pginer: (for future rounds of testing)
(10:47:11) marktraceur: siebrand: Is that a mailing list?
(10:47:31) siebrand: marktraceur: Oh, I thought you were working for WMF. You're not?
(10:47:31) planemad: a sneak peek of the designs: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30377416/prototypes/translate-ux/translate-workflow/ru/index.html#start_page
(10:47:54) marktraceur: siebrand: As a contractor, there are probably things nobody's told me yet
(10:48:12) siebrand: marktraceur: well, ask to be put on that list :)
(10:48:18) planemad: only testers get the whole deal as of now :D
(10:48:28) planemad: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7275233/wikimedia/twn-translate-visual-2.png
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(10:49:16) planemad: you can sign up on the link pginer posted. make sure you know a language other than english :)
(10:50:13) srikanthlogic: we have 10 minutes to close, feel free to shoot any questions you have on anything related to i18n
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(10:51:19) aharoni: I was actually curious about something.
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(10:51:27) srikanthlogic: We are also having an i18n bug triage next week and invite you to help us squash some old bugs.
(10:51:53) srikanthlogic: aharoni: ?
(10:52:01) srikanthlogic: Details at http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/BugTriage-i18n-2012-08 Feel free to add more bugs.
(10:52:03) aharoni: If I recall correctly, we only tested editors and readers for ULS. Is there a plan to test it with readers?
(10:52:22) planemad: srikanthlogic: how old are these old bugs?
(10:52:23) aharoni: editors and ^not^ readers
(10:53:33) srikanthlogic: planemad: some could be years old! Many would be around few months - year old as many of us might forget the older ones unless known to us
(10:54:22) srikanthlogic: aharoni: I think we should test with readers as well
(10:54:31) aude: we discussed it already ;) but curious about ULS being more intuitive and floating likely language selections to the top
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(10:54:52) aude: e.g. based on my geolocation, browser settings, etc.
(10:55:06) siebrand: That's all planned, but not yet developed.
(10:55:10) aude: ok
(10:55:15) pginer: aharoni: we tested ULS prototypes with with some non-editors
(10:55:26) aharoni: oh, ok.
(10:55:32) siebrand: We will be including geo-ip based suggestions and will initially reply with a UI in the user's accept langugae.
(10:55:35) aude: although, it's fun to try the more unusual languages
(10:55:59) siebrand: That's, in our opinion, how a UI should behave, language wise.
(10:56:29) ***aude nods
(10:56:30) pginer: aharoni: the percentage is not representative since only 3 where only readers
(10:57:11) pginer: but we tried to test with all that joined
(10:57:15) srikanthlogic: We are close to end, a few closing remarks:
(10:57:38) srikanthlogic: We will be holding a sprint demo every fortnight, on Tuesdays at 15.00 UTC.
(10:57:56) srikanthlogic: During these demos, will go in-depth on the output we have had as a team in the two weeks before, and we will outline what we will be working on in the two weeks to come.
(10:58:12) srikanthlogic: Our latest progress report is at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Localisation_team_Sprint_21_demo.pdf
(10:58:32) srikanthlogic: Our next sprint demo will be on August 21, 2012 at 15.00 UTC. It's a max. 40 minute meeting, with a presentation of at most 20 minutes, and then we have a Q&A until the meeting ends or until there are no more questions.
(10:58:49) srikanthlogic: We use WebEx, and invitation for the demos are sent to the mailing list mediawiki-i18n -> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n. Subscribe!
(10:58:50) aude: despite the outstanding to-dos, i'm very impressed with the progress on ULS and jquery stuff
(10:59:07) Nikerabbit: aude: thanks!
(10:59:17) srikanthlogic: The team will be in SF next month and hence next office hours schedule is TBD. (Otherwise we generally plan on having office hours on 3rd Wednesday)
(10:59:34) srikanthlogic: Thanks everyone for being here.
(10:59:46) srikanthlogic: A cleaned up log of this office hours will be published at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2012-08-15 .
(10:59:52) siebrand: Thanks, aude. We're trying to do the best we can. We have a fantastic team, so I'm very confident we can keep on doing great :)
(10:59:54) aude: thanks
(11:00:01) aude: yep :)
(11:00:01) Nikerabbit: thanks srikanthlogic for running this
(11:00:05) srikanthlogic: Please feel free to poke us at #mediawiki-i18n