0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

[Gurken Khan]

On 05/07/2024 at 5:08 PM, nifa said:

cherry on top would be the possibility to use the keyboard for navigation

I still refuse to accept that one can't use the main menu with the kb; not even arrows & enter. :/

 

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I'm assuming it is just the community translates it?

No, if you introduce a new string you have to translate it in all 213 languages currently supported! jk. Some posts lead me to believe strings can be marked as "translatable", so I guess that's what should be done; unfortunately I couldn't find any reference about that. Maybe @wraitii or @Stan` know more?

[Stan`]

21 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

No, if you introduce a new string you have to translate it in all 213 languages currently supported! jk. Some posts lead me to believe strings can be marked as "translatable", so I guess that's what should be done; unfortunately I couldn't find any reference about that. Maybe @wraitii or @Stan` know more?

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

Basically every monday and friday we generate the translation templates and we pull new translations from Transifex.

You have to tell the scripts which generate the templates to pull the strings from your code depending on where you put it.

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

and is there a set of guidelines because I think for anything not American English we can get rid of the US customary measurements, and I'd like the translators to know that.

You can use translateWithContext for that particular purpose https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Implementation_of_Internationalization_and_Localization#JavaScriptTranslationCacheSystem

 

[Vantha]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

Basically every monday and friday we generate the translation templates and we pull new translations from Transifex.

You have to tell the scripts which generate the templates to pull the strings from your code depending on where you put it.

You can use translateWithContext for that particular purpose https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Implementation_of_Internationalization_and_Localization#JavaScriptTranslationCacheSystem

 

And what about texts in files other than XMLs? The articles are stored in JSON files at the moment, and from those templates aren't generated. The credits text are stored in JSONs as well, how are they being marked for translation? Or should we convert the articles' JSONs into XMLs and have them being treated just like the simulation template files?

Edited July 8 by Vantha

[Stan`]

39 minutes ago, Vantha said:

And what about texts in files other than XMLs? The articles are stored in JSON files at the moment, and from those templates aren't generated. The credits text are stored in JSONs as well, how are they being marked for translation? Or should we convert the articles' JSONs into XMLs and have them being treated just like the simulation template files?

You can extract json files as well, like the options.json file.

[Vantha]

31 minutes ago, Stan` said:

You can extract json files as well, like the options.json file.

Ok. And does the translating always need to be done in the init() function?

[Stan`]

Once the strings have been extracted in the pot file, unless there are conflicts between two strings, calling the translate method anywhere will replace it by the correct translated version, you can grep for translate in the code base to see usage examples.

[Vantha]

Sorry to bother you, but I'm not sure if I'm understanding it correctly. Are the strings extracted while the code is running?

[ShadowOfHassen]

6 hours ago, Stan` said:

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

Basically every monday and friday we generate the translation templates and we pull new translations from Transifex.

You have to tell the scripts which generate the templates to pull the strings from your code depending on where you put it.

You can use translateWithContext for that particular purpose https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Implementation_of_Internationalization_and_Localization#JavaScriptTranslationCacheSystem

 

Thanks, that answers my first question. I'd rather not make translators' jobs harder.

[Stan`]

10 hours ago, Vantha said:

Sorry to bother you, but I'm not sure if I'm understanding it correctly. Are the strings extracted while the code is running?

No worries. No they are not. They are replaced when the game is running. Each translated string acts as a key that is used to find a translation, if none is found the default string is displayed.

9 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Thanks, that answers my first question. I'd rather not make translators' jobs harder.

How so?

[Vantha]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

No worries. No they are not. They are replaced when the game is running. Each translated string acts as a key that is used to find a translation, if none is found the default string is displayed.

Sorry for the confusion yesterday, I just found my answer in the code, everything's clear now .

@ShadowOfHassen I can take care of making the encyclopedia translatable.

[ShadowOfHassen]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

How so?

I don't know exactly, but they're volunteering their time and if there's some easy things I can do to make their work easier I'll happily do it.

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I don't know exactly, but they're volunteering their time and if there's some easy things I can do to make their work easier I'll happily do it.

Ah yeah, I thought you wanted to give up on the project

 

4 hours ago, Vantha said:

Sorry for the confusion yesterday, I just found my answer in the code, everything's clear now .

@ShadowOfHassen I can take care of making the encyclopedia translatable.

See also https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/TranslatingMods

[ShadowOfHassen]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Ah yeah, I thought you wanted to give up on the project

That's not going to happen, the amount of time I have to actively write things myself might wax or wane, but I'm going to try to stick around at least for editing purposes. Beside's we've basically opened the whole dimension of long form texts into the game, and like I said before, I don't want to leave the devs with another thing they have to worry about (if they don't want to)

Quote

Second. I know for a project like this, we have reviewers for code, art and even music, and I think we should have the same thing for large portions of text in game. Between @Vanthaand I we've put a lot of work into the encyclopedia so far, and I'd like to try and get the same quality of writing in the rest of the game. It would be great if whenever there's a patch with anything bigger than a tooltip, the devs could let me know, so I can give it a look and wait until we can get the text right before merging. Editing and in game text might not sound that important compared to art, code, or gameplay, but I'd still like to get it the best we can.

Besides, with rumblings of new tutorials, campaigns, and the like; someone to coordinate the narrative/writing side of things will help the devs time to be focused on things they are more interested in

 

[Vantha]

On 08/07/2024 at 4:21 PM, ShadowOfHassen said:

So because we're going to start adding articles to mainline, (as soon as @Vantha gets the amazing new UI) there are a few things I'd like to discuss/ask.

First translating. I'm assuming it is just the community translates it? , will the new places we're putting the articles be able to be translated, and second how is translation done, and is there a set of guidelines because I think for anything not American English we can get rid of the US customary measurements, and I'd like the translators to know that.

Second. I know for a project like this, we have reviewers for code, art and even music, and I think we should have the same thing for large portions of text in game. Between @Vanthaand I we've put a lot of work into the encyclopedia so far, and I'd like to try and get the same quality of writing in the rest of the game. It would be great if whenever there's a patch with anything bigger than a tooltip, the devs could let me know, so I can give it a look and wait until we can get the text right before merging. Editing and in game text might not sound that important compared to art, code, or gameplay, but I'd still like to get it the best we can.

Besides, with rumblings of new tutorials, campaigns, and the like; someone to coordinate the narrative/writing side of things will help the devs time to be focused on things they are more interested in.

To continue the thought:

In short, can we become the official "writers" for the project of 0 A.D.? 

The idea is, there are programmers, artists, playtesters, but no one responsible for creative writing tasks yet. Having dedicated people for that would not only help keeping the style consistent, but also ensure a certain level of writing across the game. And it would of course lift some things off other people's current workload.

In practice it would mean improving current texts, writing new ones, and overseeing all other related matters. And when I say "texts" I'm referring to (the untranslated English version of) everything textual in the game - from tooltips to various descriptions to campaigns to encyclopedia articles. 

[Stan`]

4 hours ago, Vantha said:

In short, can we become the official "writers" for the project of 0 A.D.? 

I'm not the sole decider for this, but what do you expect for the "official" part? As opposed to say, community balancers.
 

There is indeed a lot of writing to be done on 0 A.D. whether it's in the game or in the documentation, but you currently do not need more permissions that you currently have

There is also the design document, that has never been updated to reflect the current state of the game that could benefit from a polish.

Then there are the side tasks like adding new tips to the game https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4189

@Nescio did a very good job standardizing unit tooltips and whatnot and perfecting the english style guide. There were also some more debatable changes like changing stone to rock and and metal to ore in the editor but overall it brought a layer of consistency which is welcome. Now I must warn you though, this is a thankless job, and it will often happen that stuff gets in and needs to be corrected afterwards.

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

I'm not the sole decider for this, but what do you expect for the "official" part? As opposed to say, community balancers.

Basically the thing I'm hoping for is if in the far out future someone wants to add/change a new encyclopedia article, or campaign etc. text wise Instead of the devs looking it and say "Good," and merge it They contact me or Vantha to give it a look over to make sure it's consistent and doesn't have any errors that programmers might not see but drive English Grammar people crazy. I'm not really that worried about tooltips (though I'd gladly look them over) because I don't think someone is going to easily mess up a single sentence without people noticing. It anything longer, that might be bad.

Now this doesn't require permissions, it just requires people to remember we exist, which I don't think would be too hard, from what I can tell the dev team here is smaller compared to some other projects and I don't think we would be lost in the masses. We just need people to be on the same page. However a fancy badge would be cool... but it isn't necessary.

(Also, what does the community balancers do?  I mean, it's partly in their name, but do they run the community mod?)

For items outside the game itself, I'm willing to make some edits, however a lot of the technical stuff will probably go over my head, and so I wouldn't be of any help. But if there's anything else that needs to be looked over (wiki entries, blog post social media etc.) someone can always message me. I try to do a bit of encyclopedia each day, but I've cut down the amount I actually peruse the forums to have more time for other things.

Edited July 11 by ShadowOfHassen

[Stan`]

14 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Basically the thing I'm hoping for is if in the far out future someone wants to add/change a new encyclopedia article. Or add a campaign, text wise Instead of the devs looking it and say "Looks good," They contact me or Vantha first to give it a look over. I'm not really that worried about tooltips (though I'd gladly look them over) because I don't think someone is going to easily mess up a single sentence without people noticing.

I see. Well on Phabricator there is the https://code.wildfiregames.com/owners/package/11/  for templates, so that mean if you are asked as reviewer by someone making a patch, you'll get notified. We could create one for the encyclopedia maybe. I don't expect that many patches, unless they are coming from you and Vantha, so it would probably notify only you two and be kinda useless.

 

36 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

 

(Also, what does the community balancers do?  I mean, it's partly in their name, but do they run the community mod?)

Yeah they do, the goal was to deport the balancing responsibilities to the vocal, multiplayer community, in order to mitigate the frustration with slow releases, and allow experimentation. I believe @real_tabasco_sauce now has commit access on the community mod and can now make new releases.

37 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

For items outside the game itself, I'm willing to make some edits, however a lot of the technical stuff will probably go over my head, and so I wouldn't be of any help. But if there's anything else that needs to be looked over (wiki entries, blog post social media etc.) someone can always message me. I try to do a bit of encyclopedia each day, but I've cut down the amount I actually peruse the forums to have more time for other things

There is a significant amount of non technical docs on Trac

The design document as it was made in the 2000 with updates is here https://code.wildfiregames.com/source/design/

 

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

4 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I see. Well on Phabricator there is the https://code.wildfiregames.com/owners/package/11/  for templates, so that mean if you are asked as reviewer by someone making a patch, you'll get notified. We could create one for the encyclopedia maybe. I don't expect that many patches, unless they are coming from you and Vantha, so it would probably notify only you two and be kinda useless.

Aren't we moving away from phabricator? Still I think something like that could be easily done with gitea, all we probably need is a label for writing and we'd get notified if that's tagged. For the most part, all I ask is that devs don't merge any text changes from other people (if/when we get other contributors) until we can get it looked over. Though, it would be nice to also be able to make some additions to the style guide as we have our own style rules that we've been following.

 

6 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Yeah they do, the goal was to deport the balancing responsibilities to the vocal, multiplayer community, in order to mitigate the frustration with slow releases, and allow experimentation. I believe @real_tabasco_sauce now has commit access on the community mod and can now make new releases.

Yeah, I'm totally OK working with the articles in a kind of "unofficial" capacity, as long as we get what I say, above.

 

7 minutes ago, Stan` said:

There is a significant amount of non technical docs on Trac

Well, I'm not exactly sure I know how to maneuver trac, but when we finish up the encyopdia I'm certain we'll have moved to git, and I'll be happy to give those a look.

 

8 minutes ago, Stan` said:

The design document as it was made in the 2000 with updates is here https://code.wildfiregames.com/source/design/

Not going to blame anyone, but that would've been extremely useful in writing articles. I'll try to remember to give it a look once we move to git (sorry, but I have no clue how trac works, I've tried to figure it out but it eludes me.)

[Stan`]

1 minute ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Aren't we moving away from phabricator? Still I think something like that could be easily done with gitea, all we probably need is a label for writing and we'd get notified if that's tagged. For the most part, all I ask is that devs don't merge any text changes from other people (if/when we get other contributors) until we can get it looked over. Though, it would be nice to also be able to make some additions to the style guide as we have our own style rules that we've been following.

Well feel free to put your rules in writing so we can decide what we can agree on. Yes we're moving away from it, we're actually talking about it on IRC as I write these lines. It's not completely done yet, but it should be a matter of time.

I can't promise it won't happen, but we'll try in good faith

3 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Not going to blame anyone, but that would've been extremely useful in writing articles. I'll try to remember to give it a look once we move to git (sorry, but I have no clue how trac works, I've tried to figure it out but it eludes me.)

That's a git repo.   Feel free to ask questions about how to use trac though

[ShadowOfHassen]

19 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Well feel free to put your rules in writing so we can decide what we can agree on. Yes we're moving away from it, we're actually talking about it on IRC as I write these lines. It's not completely done yet, but it should be a matter of time.

Here are the rules we've come up, they're mostly arbitrary that we had to decide in order to make the articles consistent, i'm ok with changing most of it except for the US customary system, I kind of wrote the encyclopedia for myself and I like being able to know how big things are.

Quote with the rules:

Quote

We're writing for en_US. It really doesn't matter what you use but a tool like LanguageTool will help greatly with spellchecking. See 0 A.D.'s style guide here: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

Here are some more that we've decided on:

for consistency use BC and AD for the dates not BCE and CE

Keep numbers simple. You can write One to Nine out or ones like Million but everything else write as numerals I.E. 12345 Instead of Twelve-Thousand Three hundred and Forty Five Likewise, all dates should be numerals. I.E. 100 AD Finally, we use decimals instead of fractions ie. 1.5 instead 1 and 1/2 likewise use 2 to 3 instead of 2-3 Use the US customary system in the text and use metric in parenthesis. Please do not abbreviate either. For example: "up to 60 feet (18.28 Meters)" Round metric mesurments to the nearest 2 decimal points

As for content, some parts of history can be gruesome but try to keep the writing fairly clean no please no gruesome tortures, or sacrifice rites. Also, History is some complicated so write in a clear, polite style that tries to see everything in context of the history and place. Use the English version of any name, of there is one, for example: Plutarch (English) instead of Plutarchus (Latin) or Ploutarchos (Greek). If there is no English version, use Athenaeus (the Latin version) instead of Athenaios (Greek). If there is no Latin version, use the Greek version, like Xerxes (Greek) instead of the Persian version. For most names there is either a Greek or Latin version. If not, then use the name in the original language (can't think of an example). Names of people must always be capitalized. Same for names of groups of people (like Helots, Hoplites)

Also put sources that you use for information in the sources folder in a file for the specific unit group. I.E. we'll have one for sparta and another for Animals.' Also when you add your sources. Add your 0 A.D. Handle at the end so we can contact you later if we have any questions.

 

24 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I can't promise it won't happen, but we'll try in good faith

That works for me, just as long as we're on the same page. A badge though like the community historian would be cool (but in no way necessary) "Writer at large" or "Grammer Snob" or something more serious sounding.

 

26 minutes ago, Stan` said:

That's a git repo.   Feel free to ask questions about how to use trac though

I might poke around, it looks like it's written well enough. I was thinking of working on "customizing" some of the articles this week but I might just give that a polish instead. The document is basically to make sure the devs know what they're doing right?

How would I do a patch or PR or whatever?

[Stan`]

6 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Here are the rules we've come up, they're mostly arbitrary that we had to decide in order to make the articles consistent, i'm ok with changing most of it except for the US customary system, I kind of wrote the encyclopedia for myself and I like being able to know how big things are.

Quote with the rules:

Sounds like it's compatible with our English style guide.

7 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

That works for me, just as long as we're on the same page. A badge though like the community historian would be cool (but in no way necessary) "Writer at large" or "Grammer Snob" or something more serious sounding.

I guess I can make a "community writer" badge.

7 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

How would I do a patch or PR or whatever?

https://code.wildfiregames.com/differential/ On that page click create diff:

Paste the raw diff generated by git diff -x -U5000

Set the repository to rDD 0 A.D. Design Document, then fill the form

Now for reviews that's a bit trickier, since there is no one in charge. But unless it's huge changes, it should be okayish.

You can see the generated version here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/design/

More stuff here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/

 

 

 

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

2 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Sounds like it's compatible with our English style guide.

I guess I can make a "community writer" badge.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/differential/ On that page click create diff:

Paste the raw diff generated by git diff -x -U5000

Set the repository to rDD 0 A.D. Design Document, then fill the form

Now for reviews that's a bit trickier, since there is no one in charge. But unless it's huge changes, it should be okayish.

You can see the generated version here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/design/

More stuff here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/

 

 

 

 

Thanks! I sent you a PM with more questions on the DD to keep this on topic.

[ShadowOfHassen]

4 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Sounds like it's compatible with our English style guide.

I can add it to the normal style guide in a better written format eventually.

[Stan`]

About the names it would be nice to have the greek name next to the latinised version, just like specific and generic names for units

For the numbers I'm not familiar with what we do in the game

[ShadowOfHassen]

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

About the names it would be nice to have the greek name next to the latinised version, just like specific and generic names for units

That can be done (assuming there is a Greek name)

 

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

For the numbers I'm not familiar with what we do in the game

What I said is kind of a standard in writing. Most people don't want to have to read "one-thousand-eight-hundred-twenty-two-billion" and one looks better than 1.