Fw: Translation for time zone conversion runner

[Thomas Vergnaud]

Hi Natalie,

You explained the KDE runner is only able to recognize simple text structures. 
That is, it cannot really recognize text written in natural language; it can 
only recognize keywords in a predefined order. Therefore, you are trying to 
define a very simple «grammar» based on a limited set of keywords to be put in 
a given order.

Basically, you are attempting to find the proper grammar to say «convert the 
time <T> from timezone <A> to timezone <B>».
From the emails that have been exchanged so far, I understand there are 
different – and specific – ways to write this in natural languages. Thus it 
seems difficult to define one universal runner grammar that could conveniently 
fit in all languages.

Here is my idea: would it be possible to use keywords like «@» or «->» in the 
runner grammar? Using such technical keywords would prevent people from 
thinking they can write in natural language.

For example, one may write «10:00 @Paris -> @Tokyo», or something like that.

Thomas



Le dimanche 12 février 2023, 05:16:43 CET Natalie Clarius a écrit :
[…]
> What I can offer is to make the syntax even simpler. In a previous version,
> I had the input format as "<from-timezone> <time> <to-timezone>", e.g.
> "Berlin 8:00 UTC" to convert 08:00 Berlin time to UTC. It was suggested to
> change it to the "8:00 Berlin in UTC" style because, on the one hand, it
> was similar to what we already have in the unit conversion runner, and on
> the other hand, they (a native English speaker) considered it more
> intuitive. But I see now that this causes more problems than it solves,
> because it is pretending a complexity of understanding that isn't there,
> and won't work for languages that aren't English. So I am now leaning
> towards changing the input format to "<from-timezone> <time>
> <to-timezone>", which doesn't have any bells and whistles to cause wrong
> expectations and inconsistency between languages.
> 
> If, on the other hand, you say that both in Korean and in Turkish, a syntax
> like "<time> <from timezone> in <to timezone>" (where the time zone, the
> time zone names as well as a word for "in" are localized) is at least
> somewhat feasible, at any rate after the fact that we have (likewise
> translated) user help explaining how to use it, then I would say there is
> not much of a problem, and you are good to go by simply translating the
> "in" keyword and any strings that are used in the output formatting.