IRC office hours/Office hours 2013-03-13

Mar 13 22:30:57 <arrbee> ### Language Engineering Office Hour - Start ###
Mar 13 22:31:19 <arrbee> Welcome to the office hour of the Wikimedia Language Engineering Team.
Mar 13 22:31:37 <arrbee> My name is Runa and I am the Outreach and QA coordinator for our team.
Mar 13 22:31:52 <alolita> Good to have you on the team Runa!
Mar 13 22:32:08 <arrbee> I have recently joined the Language Engineering team and I will be working closely on building relationships with our Language Communities for efficient interaction about the Language tools and issues that they face when using Language Wiki projects.
Mar 13 22:32:23 <arrbee> I work from India. :)
Mar 13 22:32:29 <arrbee> Thanks alolita
Mar 13 22:33:04 <arrbee> The other members of our team present today are: aharoni alolita pginer Nikerabbit santhosh_ siebrand
Mar 13 22:33:24 <arrbee> As our last office hour was 3 months ago, we have quite a lot of updates about what we have been working on.
Mar 13 22:33:37 <arrbee> After that we would be happy to answer any questions.
Mar 13 22:33:57 <arrbee> If you'd like to send in your questions before the Q&A, please send them to me over a private message.
Mar 13 22:34:32 <arrbee> As I mentioned before, we are the Wikimedia Language Engineering Team and we work on enabling Language tools for MediaWiki and Wikimedia projects.
Mar 13 22:35:05 <arrbee> This essentially means creating all the magic that would make the Wikimedia universe more diverse in terms of being usable in languages from around the world.
Mar 13 22:35:43 <arrbee> This brings forth lots of challenges in providing support for the way the languages are to be displayed, written, and prepared to be used just as well as English.
Mar 13 22:35:59 <arrbee> We still have a long way to go in our mission.
Mar 13 22:36:31 <arrbee> Presently, our primary focus is on extending input methods, fonts, and also creating advanced features for the Translate Extension (TUX).
Mar 13 22:36:46 <arrbee> Agenda for Today:
Mar 13 22:37:07 <arrbee> Since our last office hour, the team has been working to make our Language Tools better.
Mar 13 22:37:23 <arrbee> We shall be giving an update about:
Mar 13 22:37:39 <arrbee> 1. Release of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle (MLEB)
Mar 13 22:38:02 <arrbee> 2. Translate UX (TUX)
Mar 13 22:38:09 <arrbee> 3. Participation in various community events
Mar 13 22:38:37 <arrbee> Also we have some updates on two of the topics that were discussed during the last office hour.
Mar 13 22:39:04 <arrbee> 4 Language Team plans
Mar 13 22:39:13 <alolita> Runa: can you also tell us more about our team's input methods support and progress made recently
Mar 13 22:39:21 <arrbee> 5. Testing Event plans
Mar 13 22:39:42 <arrbee> alolita: sure
Mar 13 22:40:21 <arrbee> Updates :
Mar 13 22:40:36 <arrbee> 1. Release of the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle
Mar 13 22:41:00 <arrbee> MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle (in short MLEB) 2013.02 has been released.
Mar 13 22:41:31 <arrbee> The aim of MLEB is to provide easy to install (and update) package of useful language support and translation related extensions.
Mar 13 22:42:26 <arrbee> MLEB releases are made each month so that new features and bug fixes get quickly to the users, while avoiding the occassional breakages compared to using the development version of these extensions directly.
Mar 13 22:43:07 <arrbee> Future improvements considered for MLEB is to release version that supports MediaWiki 1.19 and running unit tests against the releases automatically.
Mar 13 22:43:19 <arrbee> Thats all for MLEB
Mar 13 22:43:36 <arrbee> 2. Translate UX
Mar 13 22:43:42 <arrbee> aka TUX
Mar 13 22:43:46 <alolita> amir - can you post the link to the MLEB release notes for everyone to refer to - thanks!
Mar 13 22:45:31 <arrbee> The Language Engineering team is working on redesigning the Translate Extension.
Mar 13 22:46:07 <arrbee> The goal is to make the translation process more fluent and the presentation of information more clear.
Mar 13 22:46:48 <arrbee> You can take a look at the new UI at http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&tux=1
Mar 13 22:47:05 <arrbee> The tool provides three views:
Mar 13 22:47:25 <arrbee> a list of messages to translate,
Mar 13 22:47:59 <arrbee> a page layout for translation (convenient for translatable pages), and
Mar 13 22:48:10 <arrbee> the proofread view
Mar 13 22:48:57 <arrbee> In the current sprint the focus is on improving the proofreading view, where logged-in users can verify translations from the community.
Mar 13 22:49:31 <arrbee> Feel free to test the new UI, and provide us with your questions and the issues you found.
Mar 13 22:49:48 <arrbee> pginer: would you like to add anything on this?
Mar 13 22:50:41 <pginer> Just insist on asking for feedback. We don't know all languages (yet) so it is very helpful to see whether our tools meet the needs of the different language communities.
Mar 13 22:52:36 <alolita> pginer: how do folks provide feedback?
Mar 13 22:52:46 <arrbee> http://hexm.de/TUX-testing -> Please use this link if you'd like to participate in a usability test with pginer
Mar 13 22:53:04 <Vogone> arrbee: is the new UI compatible with all skins/browsers/operating systems?
Mar 13 22:53:46 <siebrand> Vogone: translators need a modern browser with adequate JavaScript support.
Mar 13 22:54:40 <Vogone> okay
Mar 13 22:55:03 <santhosh_> Vogone, not tested on all skins of MediaWiki.
Mar 13 22:55:07 <siebrand> Vogone: We are planning for implementing automated interation tests on most major browser platforms, so that use cases that are broken will surface more easily.
Mar 13 22:55:23 <siebrand> Indeed. Vector skin is highly advised.
Mar 13 22:55:39 * Vogone uses monobook
Mar 13 22:56:38 <arrbee> okay… I'll move on for now.
Mar 13 22:56:40 <malkum_> I am trying to understand the difference between List and Page views.
Mar 13 22:57:10 <santhosh_> malkum_, List of translation, Page is visualising original and translated versions side by side
Mar 13 22:57:55 <pginer> List shows a message per line, so long messages may not be shown completely.
Mar 13 22:58:39 <arrbee> Before moving on to the next item, here is the link to the release announcement for the latest MLEB release:
Mar 13 22:58:48 <arrbee> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2013-February/000622.html
Mar 13 22:58:51 <pginer> The page view shows messages completely, which makes it more suited for translating translatable pages for example since you can get more context information of what is above and below the current message.
Mar 13 23:00:21 <arrbee> 3. Participation in various community events
Mar 13 23:00:30 <aharoni> And also, the MLEB homepage: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MLEB
Mar 13 23:00:46 <arrbee> The team also participated in various community events and you may have already read about them in our blogs.
Mar 13 23:01:03 <arrbee> This included FOSDEM at Brussels and GNUnify at Pune, India.
Mar 13 23:01:29 <arrbee> The other major event was the OpenSource Language Summit that was hosted jointly with Red Hat at Pune.
Mar 13 23:01:40 <arrbee> The event report is here:
Mar 13 23:01:49 <arrbee> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pune_LanguageSummit_February_2013/Event_Report
Mar 13 23:02:26 <arrbee> The shorter version is that we followed up on the discussions and work that was started during the last summit in November 2012 and also started with some new projects.
Mar 13 23:02:44 <arrbee> This includes:
Mar 13 23:02:51 <malkum_> In Proofread view , I would also like a provision for Unaccept the translation, just in case the user accepts a translation accidentally
Mar 13 23:03:09 <malkum_> like facebook Like / Unlike
Mar 13 23:03:18 <Nikerabbit> malkum_: if there is something wrong with the translation after all, you should fix it
Mar 13 23:03:55 <arrbee> 1. Creating a document on the technical specifications of fonts of the Indian language scripts, and
Mar 13 23:04:21 <arrbee> 2. Detailed discussions about the internationalization and localization testing events conducted by Fedora.
Mar 13 23:04:59 <arrbee> We believe that based upon this we now have a better understanding of formulating similar testing events for our extensions.
Mar 13 23:05:03 <malkum_> Nikerabbit, agreed! but what if I accepted something accidentally which I dont know how to translate
Mar 13 23:05:18 <arrbee> More about this in a little while.
Mar 13 23:05:53 <arrbee> alolita: Do you have anything to add to the above?
Mar 13 23:06:11 <Nemo_bis> malkum_: mark fuzzy? do a dummy change?
Mar 13 23:06:24 <jeremyb_> moinmoin
Mar 13 23:07:02 <alolita> arrbee: i think pau did :-)
Mar 13 23:07:29 <arrbee> alolita: I meant for the OpenSource Language Summit :)
Mar 13 23:07:43 <arrbee> (it did get a bit muddled in there)
Mar 13 23:07:56 <alolita> sorry - context switching :-)
Mar 13 23:08:29 <alolita> we accomplished a lot at the core developer sprints at the language summit in feb
Mar 13 23:08:53 <alolita> arrbee referred to a couple of accomplishments
Mar 13 23:09:38 <alolita> including kicking off the work on the Indic language font specification by Santhosh and other collaborators from Red hat's i18n team
Mar 13 23:09:53 <malkum_> Nemo_bis, I didnot get you
Mar 13 23:09:57 <santhosh_> https://github.com/santhoshtr/fontbook
Mar 13 23:10:01 <alolita> we now have the font spec available on github
Mar 13 23:10:10 <alolita> santhosh - thanks for the link!
Mar 13 23:10:45 <arrbee> I'd also like to add the part about IMEs that alolita referred to earlier. We added 60 new input methods to jQuery.ime during the 2 day event
Mar 13 23:11:12 <alolita> the input methods added were a very significant contribution
Mar 13 23:11:15 <Nemo_bis> malkum_: changing the message resets its proofread status; if you also mark it !!FUZZY!!, you explicitly request its update/check
Mar 13 23:11:45 <alolita> our input method repository on github now is the largest open source repository for web based input methods
Mar 13 23:12:40 <alolita> santhosh worked with parag nemade of red hat to make significant progress on adding and merging input methods to our github jQuery.ime repo
Mar 13 23:13:06 <alolita> santhosh - do you have a current number of languages now supported by jQuery.ime
Mar 13 23:14:04 <santhosh_> 70+
Mar 13 23:14:16 <alolita> thanks santhosh!
Mar 13 23:14:18 <santhosh_> need to count for exact number :)
Mar 13 23:14:36 <arrbee> Thanks alolita santhosh_
Mar 13 23:14:50 <arrbee> I'll go to the next item
Mar 13 23:14:56 <arrbee> 4. Language Team plans
Mar 13 23:15:38 <arrbee> We would like to leverage the language expertise from within the language communities to find an efficient way of gathering information about matters that are critical and need to be corrected without delay.
Mar 13 23:16:18 <arrbee> For this, we are working out the details of how we can equip volunteers from the language communities, with appropriate information and guidance to work closely with the Language Engineering team.
Mar 13 23:16:46 <arrbee> And more importantly on maintaining a continuous two-way communication.
Mar 13 23:17:03 <arrbee> We plan to have this ready sometime by the end of this month.
Mar 13 23:17:43 <arrbee> aharoni: Would you like to add anything more here?
Mar 13 23:18:06 <aharoni> Well, just a bit:
Mar 13 23:18:53 <aharoni> Basically, we shall need people who love their language and want to help us make it work better in Wikimedia projects.
Mar 13 23:19:19 <aharoni> It's a plan that will help us understand what different languages need.
Mar 13 23:20:06 <aharoni> We assume that at least some languages need more software support than they have now, and we want to help the people who speak them tell us what they need.
Mar 13 23:20:10 <aharoni> That's really the summary of it.
Mar 13 23:20:22 <aharoni> More details will be published very soon.
Mar 13 23:20:25 <arrbee> Thanks aharoni .
Mar 13 23:20:44 <arrbee> If you'd like to help us with some ideas on this, please feel free to ping me or aharoni .
Mar 13 23:20:54 <alolita> we would also love to have wikimedians to report bugs on bugzilla.wikimedia.org if they see problems with their fonts and input methods
Mar 13 23:21:18 <arrbee> Quickly moving on to the last item in our agenda and then to Q&A
Mar 13 23:21:21 <alolita> please ping arrbee if you would like us to help you report bugs on bugzilla
Mar 13 23:21:45 <arrbee> 5. Language Tools testing event
Mar 13 23:21:55 <arrbee> We are presently working out a plan for organising testing events with users of Language Wikis and of the Language tools.
Mar 13 23:22:21 <arrbee> For this, we intend to have scheduled test day(s) with focus on specific tools.
Mar 13 23:22:53 <arrbee> Users can test the features using test cases/instructions and can record their observations and provide feedback.
Mar 13 23:23:15 <arrbee> We plan to organise these testing events regularly to coincide with important releases.
Mar 13 23:23:39 <arrbee> We'll have more information about this sometime by the end of this month.
Mar 13 23:23:59 <arrbee> That completes the updates.
Mar 13 23:24:12 <arrbee> Q & A:
Mar 13 23:24:30 <arrbee> Any questions for us?
Mar 13 23:25:28 <alolita> Just adding a shameless plug for the Language Engineering team - we're hiring! we're looking for a solid Javascript developer - ping me 1:1 if you're interested :-)
Mar 13 23:26:31 <alolita> some of our team also plans to be at the Amsterdam hackathon coming up in May (just a couple of months away) so join up if you're in the neighborhood and work with us
Mar 13 23:27:04 <malkum_> New UI rocks. Claps, Whistles, Hifi's to the development and design teams
Mar 13 23:27:21 <arrbee> :)
Mar 13 23:27:29 <santhosh_> malkum_, and thanks for your random patches too. expecting more@!
Mar 13 23:27:31 <alolita> we're also going to be participating with projects in this year's GSoC so keep track!
Mar 13 23:28:13 <malkum_> santhosh_, love to.. learning things by the way a lot. Appreciate yours and Nike's support.
Mar 13 23:28:16 <arrbee> We have a minute more
Mar 13 23:29:17 <alolita> any more questions? again we're always on #mediawiki-i18n
Mar 13 23:29:34 <alolita> please find us if you have any questions or feedback