On Fri, 2001-10-05 at 01:24, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
Oh, fine. Thanks for the wise trust in gtranslator .-)The following are usability comments on gtranslator from someone changing favorite po editor. Ah, ok, I didn't get any greater feedback in this area -- in the last days I got very useful hints what's going wrong in some places. gtranslator is improving -- thanks to your reports!It is very important when a user is doing something repetitive like translating strings, to be able to do a "translation cycle" comfortably and fast. A translation cycle is the process of translating the current message and moving to the next one.
Well, almost the same like me/we are using as developers -- the local box is named translation box (trans_box in the code) ,-)
Here it goes: 1. User scenarios One user scenario is to have the message table unordered so that all translated/untranslated/fuzzy messages follow the original po order. That is, no grouping. However, different colors help you distinguish which is which. Hm, you mean the grouping is not a good solution? I like it, there are some small problems with it but these can be solved though (Kevin ,-)). You mean keyboard shortcuts? There are all present currently (except the 3rd case -- but something like that could be integrated); if we would/could find some icons for these cases I'd be happy to add such buttons, menu entries .-)Special shortcuts allow you to go to the - next fuzzy - next untranslated - next fuzzy or untranslated - next message (any type of message, just for completeness) Hm, you mean something like a more contextual view? That's a bit hard to do: how to integrate something like that in the GUI? The messages table isn't mandatory (you can turn it off in the prefs to save memory + CPU time), even for people without the messages table all important elements should be visible.Benefits - keeps "vi" translators happy... - help to identify from previous/next messages what the current message is about. If you can provide me a GUI-al idea how to do contextual views / what you wanted to see for an example GUi element en detail I might be a bit more enlighted ,-) kabalak is currently thinking about something like a popup element for the prev./next messages contents.. Maybe too crazy?For example, if the current message is "Lower window", it can be translated as "Lower the window" or "The lower window". If physically next/previous messages are there, one can understand from "Raise window" which of the two options are needed. Ha, good to hear that the messages table is welcome .-)The existing scenario with the three groupings of the messages is also good to keep. 2. Initial contact When one loads a .po file in gtranslator, a message is chosen and shown in the english/local boxes. However, it is not highlighted in the message table. This is not intuitive. The first message of the message table should be highlighted and shown. There's a problem I'd like to solve a logical dis-function of the messages table currently: the messages are inserted in reversed order into the messages table -- the last message first, the first at last. Therefore you won't see it if the first message is marked in the table (it should scroll, but I think, there was a problem with the focusing of the table, Kevin?) If you scroll fully down to the first message you will see that the first message is physically really marked -- that's a problematic issue of the table we should fix. If we would insert the messages in the right order (first - first, last - last), then this won't be an issue at all as the marking is done and you'll probably see then the marked first message in the table .-) Uhm? They ought to go backwards if necessary -- the next fuzzy message could be the (example!) 13th message and you're at the 475th message: in this situation the next fuzzy is at 13, and therefore gtranslator moves to there.3. Keyboard shortcuts The "Next untranslated" and "Next fuzzy" commands go backwards. I was thinking about adding prev. / next fuzzy, untranslated navigation items to ease this situation a bit but would you really want to miss the ability to cruise through all untranslated or fuzzy messages with only 1 shortcut (Alt+U/Z)?This is not intuitive. They should go forwards with respect with what is shown in the message table and the current message should be automatically highlighted and sufficiently visible in the message table. The problem with the messages table was stated by me already above -- it's a bug in the table which results in usability problems at the last consequence. Hm, yes the navigation shortcuts are captured by an own gtranslator key_press handler which does await the hardcoded standard navigation keys Ctrl+Arrow Keys. As this handler is bind to the text boxes you can't use Ctrl+N/P while being in them, outside they will probably work as gtranslator's keyhandler isn't binded to the other widgets (yet).The keyboard focus can be set in either the message table, the english box or the local box. When it is in the local box, the Ctrl-N/Ctrl-P accelerators do not seem to work when they are associated with Next/Previous. Right, I tried it now.. Must say that this is quite weird for me.. Hm, aren't the Ctrl+Arrow Keys intuitive for navigating through the messages?! I could enhance the keyhandler to also accept the Ctrl+P/N keys but that would be a hack -- if you want this, I'll do it. No problem..This is very strange, if you associate with e.x. Ctrl-O, they work. But not with Ctrl-P/Ctrl-N. Other accelerators work ok. Again a pointer to the table bug -- if the bug is gone away, this will be working normal .-)Ctrl-LeftArrow/Ctrl-RightArror: they move to the previous physical message, irrespective of what is shown in the message table. They should follow the message table, and Ctrl-RightArrow should go downwards on the table, Ctrl-LeftArrow upwards. Yes, that's the reversed logic problem -- if the logic/insertion method is the "right way 'round" it'll move into the right direction ,-)Ctrl-UpArrow/Ctrl-DownArrow duplicate the usage of the left/right arrows. Again, the down arrow moves upwards to the list of messages. Oh yes, this is really due to my custom key_press handler. Would you file a bug for this on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gtranslator ? This is definitely a heavy bug.Ctrl-Shift-LeftArrow/Ctrl-Shift-RightArrow: These are used to select from the current position until the begining/end of text. The Shift button is currently ignored, thus it works like Ctrl-LeftArrow/Ctrl-RightArrow. It helps of course, it points my (and maybe also some other developers') attention to some bugs in the gtranslator code.I hope this report helps,Thanks for the application, Thanks for using it and giving some feedback ,-)
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