Question - Multi-Lingual Wiki for Documentation

Dear list,

I have installed and tested TWiki quite succesfully in our environment and now want to embark on setting up the site. Using Twiki: (Tue, 04 Jul 2006 build 10807)

The initial request is to set up the documentation for our Merchandise Management System. Up to now, I used a .doc and made a .chm help file from it that was called from within Oracle using a language pointer to the file, e.g. 123456_gb. The user would be presented with a help file in his language.

I am wondering how to implement this in TWiki. I guess I need to set up one wiki per content languageon the same server?

BUT: In Oracle, I can only call one name and a language string. The name would be German though, e.g. wiki/D/LagerLagerbedingungen_D. That is not the English name, so pointing to wiki/GB/LagerLagerbedingungen_GB is a bit useless, as it should be "DcConditions".

I am a bit at a loss. I could use numbers, but are there aliases in TWiki? (i.e.: 123_D pointing to /D/LagerLagerbedingungen and 123_GB pointing to /GB/DcConditions)

Thanks in advance for your help & suggestions.

Regards, Kevin Walsh

Environment

-- KevinWalsh - 02 Aug 2006

Answer

If you answer a question - or have a question you asked answered by someone - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status is in a drop-down list below the edit box.

I am not sure I understand what you would like to accomplish. TWiki handles Tag:internationalization, you might want to leverage something from there.

Do you want to maintain documentation of your products written in different languages in TWiki? In this case you could create a TWiki web per language, and maintain multiple product documents as TWiki topics in each web. Such as Prod1, Prod2, Prod3 in GB web, and Prod1, Prod2, Prod3 in D web.

In each topic you have a TWiki form that contains the full name, summary etc of your product. With a VarSEARCH that is formatted you can run reports that show lists of products, by language.

Feel free to re-open this question with more details of what you'd like to accomplish.

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Aug 2006

Thanks for your answer, but the problem is still on....

I'll try to explain it in more detail:

We have an Oracle Forms based application. I am building the online help system. Within Forms, we can only set ONE topic ID (could be a name, too), but pass a language ID.

So up to now, the call of a help file is like:

[hh.exe -mapid Topic_ID lager_ Language_ID .chm]

(variables bold - Topic_ID and Language_ID).

Note: The Topic_ID is always the same, be it German or English, the host simply calls different files. I don't want to call a TWiki topic 123456, though, as it would show up in the TOC as 123456, wouldn't it? I'd like to call something like host/TWiki/ GB /bin/view/123456 but get a clear text (nice) page, without the number. If I need to get the German docs, I'd replace the GB with D and get the German topic: host/TWiki/ D /bin/view/123456.

Be it German or English - the User does not want to see (or search for) the Topic_ID, but only the full name like 'locating instructions'.

I do hope this made it a bit clearer.

Thank you, Kevin

-- KevinWalsh - 18 Aug 2006

I am needing the same thing for translations of a software manual (http://www.kinodv.org/). I am still weighing different approaches. The one mentioned here (multiple twiki) suffers from the disadavantage mentioned here, but MultiLangPlugin attempts to help. Another approach is mutliple languages in one topic: Plugins.Plugins/MultiLangPlugin. That plugin topic also explains the pros of that approach. Finally, the last approach is one topic per language in the same web as helped by TopicTranslationsPlugin. The latter two approaches avoid the problem mentioned here by enforcing consistent topic naming, but they also do not provide for language-dependent WikiWords.

-- DanDennedy - 30 Sep 2006

Closing after 30 days due to inactivity.

-- PeterThoeny - 03 Nov 2006