[kdewebdev-site] Proposed design elements

[Chris Hornbaker]

On Friday 19 March 2004 00:45, Eric Laffoon wrote:
> Hi all,
> Recently Chris Hornbaker sent me a proposal of some code to manage
> particular aspects of the site. For those of you who don't know Chris has
> been involved with Quanta helping us focus on XML technologies and this is
> his aspect of the project. He also worked on Quanta's docs. In short, he's
> rather prolific in his contributions to the project. Sort of a white
> tornado. ;-)
>
> Because I'm rather busy and expect to have more time next week and because
> I think this deserves discussion I want to make his proposal available for
> review and feedback. I have not fully reviewed it but I want to make a few
> statements about it. First off there are things I do and don't like about
> it. However it looks like it is fairly modular. I'm sure Chris will correct
> me if I'm wrong here. The basic aspects of it are:
> 1) It derives from the design on kde.org for translation abilities
> 2) It has some classes for handling menus and making sure they adhere to
> compliant design and accessability.
>
> Because XHTML is Chris' area of expertise I'm sure he'll be involved a lot
> in the site. My initial concerns are as follows.
> TRANSLATION
> This is an interesting design. Initially I was concerned if it was too
> complex but at the same time it can be difficult to abstract out content.
> Ideally we would have the alternate option to simply have abstracted
> content files in different language directories. They would not have to be
> simply plain text if we had a framework designed. In fact Chris's proposal
> is compelling but it does require that all strings that must be translated
> are packaged like this. Once you get past that it's great. Getting past
> that is therefore one question for discussion. Another is my curiosity
> about translators. Do we have people already interested in this. I would
> certainly not want to rule it out and do a limited design but I'm also
> curios what the support level will be. I'm sure it's not totally
> representative either, I'm just curios.

I want to translate it to Lojban! :-D No, seriously... I do want to translate 
it to Lojban. 

There's two ways the translation stuff can be handled, BTW. Either use plain 
markup and place all strings to be translated in <i18n></i18n> or, for more 
static stuff, just use i18n()/i18nVar(). The markup version adds an extra 
step, but you can automate it (see i18n2php.sh).

Of course, you don't have to use it, but it can be helpful. (a few .po files 
versus a hundred php files)

> MENUS
> My initial concern looking at this is that we might want to make things
> function more streamlined. Also, my general preference is to create menu
> include files with the intelligence to see where they are and such and just
> drop them on the page.

There's a var for this, actually. Unless you meant something else...

> GENERAL
> Who is Bobby and why is he getting so much free advertising? ;-)
> However valid my preference is to display as little preference as possible
> and generally show W3C only. Of course if there is a reason to do
> differently...

Bobby is W3C :-)

Bobby checks accessibility against 1) US gov't 508 or 2) W3C's Web Content 
Accessibility Guide or 3) Both.

A very basic page generated by it is /very/ accessibility (compared to most).

> I was going to post this up on the site but as it's small enough to be
> included I'll attach it. I'm sure Chris will have comments and I hope
> others do too. I will certainly make a decision where one needs to be made,
> but my preference is that the people working on this project will have some
> degree of consensus which means I don't have to make a decision because
> it's made by consensus. Feel free to speak your mind, politely of course.
> ;-)
>
> The file is attached.

I'd just like to add that I know a good bit of the code is rather, um,... 
crude, but I think the generally concept is there and it, at least, gives us 
something to start with.

-- 
Christopher Hornbaker           
Jabber ID: Jilks at jabber.org     Email: chrishornbaker at earthlink.net
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