[digiKam-users] First contact to the community

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi Jean Pierre

Le jeu. 27 oct. 2022 à 19:08, Jean-Pierre Boucher
<jp.boucher1 at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> I am a newcomer (72 years old) who went to discover digiKam (Version 7.8.0 on Windows 10 since October 11, I live in France in Ezy-sur-Eure 70 km from Paris I am retired from the aeronautics (Flight Control Systems).
>

You're welcome. I'm working in a Big French Research Center in Energy
near Manosque, Bouche du Rhône, France

> Not finding substantial product documentation in French, I decided to fully translate the original manual (I'm in first draft on page 220/320, a lot of work ), but it will take me another 1.5 months or so to finish it. as faithfully as possible to the product.

the translation workflow pass through the i18n team from KDE project.
There are 2 type of team : one working on GUI translations, one
working in DOC translations.

Both use a special workflow based on English text exportation
container .po files which is mostly a structured text file indicating
the string, the place in code, and the corresponding translated
version.

Translators get the .po file (Program Object) for an application, open
the file with the relevant application to help to translate, work on
translation, save the result in the same .po file, and send the data
to the coordinator of the team. This last one will double check the
translation and will push data in the repository (before subversion,
but it's under progress to switch to git).

Later, when the application is packaged, .po file is compiled to a .mo
file (Machine Object) which is a binary file loaded at run time to
apply the translations.

All is explained on line :

https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/translation

https://l10n.kde.org/docs/translation-howto/



>
> In this context, I test all the functions one by one in order to fully understand their use and take all the screenshots of the French version of the product.
>
> First observations:
>     • For the attention of persons in charge of documentation
>         ◦ The manual is very rich (almost too much), it is very informative, many topics overflow from the User Manual, which makes it difficult to maintain and translate. The related knowledge part could be documented separately (file formats, DAM methods, tool algorithms...etc)

This is almost the case, as each part is hosted in a separated file.

The documentation is based on docbook format, an open source container
dedicated to write documentation, which can be post processed later to
export contents in different formats as text, PDF, doc, html, rtf.
Similar to Latex, but different as docbook use XML based structure to
host the contents.

For your information the original doc in English is hosted in this git
repository :

https://invent.kde.org/documentation/digikam-doc

>         ◦ Functions are in the documentation but not in the product and vice versa (which makes the translation very complex)

Yes, documentation needs a big update to be in sync with the application.

>         ◦ If you wish, I will make a detailed point of the discrepancies and shortcomings (very many towards the end … "to do" ;-) …)

Hum this point needs a reunion to talk about step by step. It will be better.

>
>     • For the attention of people in charge of developments
>     • Translating certain tools that don't work (in my version under Windows 10), even if there aren't many of them, is not easy, if only to take screenshots … (such as importing cameras)

This is why the Q must be posted in this room. Do not mix multiple Q
together, group by tools or features it will be better.

>     • If you wish, I will later make a detailed point of the anomalies observed

Sure. Perhaps with a video meeting, as proposed in another mail...

>
> For now, regardless of the Manual, I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of this product, in 15 days of all-out testing I only had one crash (in the Clone Repair function).

Crash must be reported to bugzilla, not in the mailing list. We need
the context, the data, and the description of the operations done to
reproduce the crash. A terminal capture will help, and the top of the
top is a debugger backtrace. It's explained here :

https://www.digikam.org/contribute/

> For the Improvements I don't know who to address my requests to… I will prepare a small list by the end of November. They concern the tools of the image editor (some tools work perfectly, some lack ergonomics, some others are enigmatic ...), I find that for the classification part there is practically nothing to say except maybe the possibility of having a sort key on the search elements.

All wishes must also be hosted in bugzilla. One entry by feature,
catalogued in the right section, which OS, and DK version used. All
developers are in CC of bugzilla changes.

>
> I dare to hope that I have not wasted your time with my remarks.
> In any case, congratulations for all your work.

Thanks

My best

Gilles Caulier