Translatewiki handout material
As Niklas suggested, it would also be useful to create simple banners in various sizes which projects using translatewiki.net can place on their websites or where they wish, with text like
- "Powered by translatewiki.net translators"
- "Translated at translatewiki.net"
etc.
Speaking of the paper material, perhaps it's better to separate graphics and writing? If someone has design skills we can surely help him with the writing part, if there's no suitable text on Project:About and so on (clarifying because those are two quite different skills).
Yes, even though there'd be someone willing to design (or pay for design), they'd need to know what to design. Both visual preferences, logo source and not least content. I suggest we make a page for it and move this thread to that page's discussion page. The page could be promotion materials.
If you need some graphical help I could lend a hand (though I'm not a professional designer)... in school I learnt how to make leaflets and I am eventually able to create banners as well. All I would need is the material to use for them, which includes the written information about twn (exact links to sections/pages with the correct info) and the respective logos to use. For the banners I would need a description of how the banners should look like.
My general questions so far:
- How many columns should that leaflets have? (Commonly used in Germany: 3)
- Frontside printed and backside printed or only one side?
- Format (probably German DIN A4? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size)
- Dimension of the banners and fonts/colors to use
- In what formats would you like to have the files (leaflets/banners) - pdf, doc, ooo/psd, svg, png, jpg
Let me know and I will create some examples. If you don't like them later you can still suggest corrections or search for another helper. As for the timeframe... can't promise they will be ready in 1-2 days, but 1-2 weeks should be enough for the creation of the leaflet and 1-2 example banners.
Quick draft/proposal, very basic and open for suggestions: https://skitch.com/mpb4848/etumq/twn-leaflet-proposal
(also, the preview function in this editor doesn't work for me)
pdf, png and jpg are non-editable, ooo and psd cannot be uploaded to most wikis (also, psd is proprietary and ooo maybe not the best for this?), so I would go with SVG (though, as it is probably obvious, I don't know anything about design :).
As for the content, I think translatewikis killer features are:
- very polished collaboration and communication features, by relying on the same software as Wikipedia
- a good translation interface which makes good use of said features (with the qqq help messages)
- inclusion of standard translations tools (translation memory, machine translation) into the interface
- very easy overview of similar messages through the links in the translation memory box. This sounds like a very minor feature (and is very hard to find), but I found it extremely useful in ensuring some level of consistency for the translations.
- a large and active community (including real-time support via IRC - it might not be directly useful for non-wikimedians, though I am not sure about that, but it is certainly a good way of gouging that a community is active and easy to reach).
- proven track record by long-time cooperation with several large OS projects
Language variety might not be that interesting for people looking for a translation platform (beyond the huge number of languages, which is certainly impressive); language support (such as input interfaces) probably more so, but I have little experience in that area.
I would leave most of the contact part of the draft out as well - assuming this will be distributed for people who are looking for a translation platform for their project, and might choose Translatewiki for that, they are hardly interested in contacting people on their talk page and such. On the other hand, having an xs4all email address is very unprofessional, and preferring the half-forum, half-wiki interface of the support page over email is even more so. It should really just say "Contact info@translationwiki.net for more information".
The original image can be created in an editable image format that supports layers. Then you can create a copy of it in a usual image format like png and jpg. If you preserve the original image files you can edit them at any time and create a new copy in png or jpg and so on.
Yes, but you would still want the original uploaded together with the end formats. I don't think that's currently possible with anything other than SVG.
I think for the images (logos) we can go with svg or psd - both are editable with free software (gimp/inkscape). For the document we should use a doc or odt (using another format to design a leaflet is sort of PITA with manual margin/padding calculation) and save the final version in pdf, png and jpg - one of these works everywhere.
A total different approach to this would be using google docs to host it once the basic layout is done (never tried it so don't know what happens to the columns when uploading there).
Should probably have sections for software developers looking for translation platform and for translators to invite them to join.
Will create a new version today and link it.
New version https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/twn%20leaflet%20proposal2.pdf?w=467e0542 (italic font in the document is a comment - we can use those for discussion here)