Fhem for non-German speakers ?

[stefaanv]

Hi,

I'm new to Fhem but got very interested after reading the introduction on the main website.
My German, however, is very bad.  Is it possible for non-German speakers to get Fhem up-and-running ?  Does anyone have experience ?
I found a 76 pages "Getting started guide" (in German) on the website, does something similar exist in English ?
Can anyone point me to good English (or Dutch) documentation ?

Stefaan

[fruit]

I'm English and have no German at all (much too old for that now) and running fhem for a couple of months, so it's certainly possible.
I started with the same German guide you mention I think, translating a section at a time into English using google. It's good enough to make sense of.
Have you checked the main fhem page? It links to HowTos and other pages in English. commandref is also available in English as are a few of the wiki pages. For the rest and the forum I copy into google translate.

Posts here are sometimes moved to more appropriate places and generally answered in English

[oliv06]

Same for me. I have been using FHEM for a year and I do not speak german at all. I use google to translate when necessary but that's not very efficient.

I have written a few posts on my blog (in french! http://play.with.free.fr/index.php/tag/fhem/ ) so anybody speaking french will find information. I try to keep it updated with new tips I find in order to remind them, because it is possible to loose a lot of time with fhem and perl syntax...

If anybody else is interested, it would be fine to translate part of the wiki and  the  "Getting started guide" in english.

[UliM]

Hi all,
the beginners guide doesn't exist in english yet.  Two months ago I sent the original doc to someone in Southafrica who wanted to translate it, but haven't had any more news.
However, someone started translating it to dutch, maybe that can helkp when it's done
Should anyone be willing to invest the wiork of translating it into english, I'd offer to provide the original word-doc as a basis, also I'd take care of publishing it on the fhem webpage.


Otherwise, all original documentation to fhem is in english, espcially the command-refrence explaing all available modules: http://fhem.de/commandref.html
Installation instructions etc can all be found on fhem.de which is fully available in english.

Posting questions in english in folders other than the one named "English Corner" is also welcome - just go ahead, you will receive answers in english.

Have fun with fhem,
Uli

[Patrocks]

Uli,

I would be able to put some time into translating your beginners guide.  Can you pm it to me?

Regards

Pat.

[Rince]

What about posting the guide in the wiki for translation?
So anyone can translate a little bit?

My English is bad for sure, but surely better than Google translate

[fruit]

I think it would be very useful to have a translation available. It is an excellent work and helped me understand things in the beginning - I still refer to it now.

I do think it's important to have at least some translation input from a German speaker. As already noted, google makes a mess of some phrases/terms.

Updating for new versions would be nice, but a lot of work I expect. I feel most would be grateful for an English version so less of an issue - as is the case for Floorplan.

I have a very roughly tidied translation paragraph by paragraph via google in .odt extracted fom the pdf (no MSWord here) for anyone serious about translating, if it's any use, but it's from a d/l in September I think - at least two versions ago?

[oliv06]

What about posting the guide in the wiki for translation?
So anyone can translate a little bit?

My English is bad for sure, but surely better than Google translate

It is a good idea in my opinion because it may also be corrected by others more easily.

[UliM]

@fruit: Can you pls get in touch with Patrocks as he started that translation task.

@all: Shared translation is a great idea, however the whole thing is available as word.docx as an original, not sure what would happen to formatting when wiki-ing it. And without that formatting, I think readability would be impacted strongly.
Updates have not been extensive in the past year or so - except in the Homematic-appendix.

For now, I'm looking forward what Pat comes up with. IShould he ask for support, I'd suggest to rather split the word-doc and have different chapters translated separately, then put them together again, rather than wiki-ing it.

Can you agree?

Merry xmas everyone,
Uli

[fruit]

@fruit: Can you pls get in touch with Patrocks as he started that translation task.

Done.

[Prof. Dr. Peter Henning]

Sorry for being rather blunt, but I consider this "English corner" rather obsolete. Actually, most of the FHEM developers are technically oriented people, and therefore well trained in reading and writing English text. This is also obvious from the large number of contributions that have been moved to other places by Rudolf Koenig.

I therefore suggest to any non-German speaker: don't be shy, post your contributions (or questions) in English into any of the special places here in the Forum - it is much more likely to get an answer there than here.

Regards

pah

[Rince]

Although this has nothing to do with the translation task, maybe pah is right.
Perhaps letting the english corner alive, but with a pinnend thread and pah's invitation to use the normal forum.

[createch2]

Sorry for being rather blunt, but I consider this "English corner" rather obsolete. Actually, most of the FHEM developers are technically oriented people, and therefore well trained in reading and writing English text. This is also obvious from the large number of contributions that have been moved to other places by Rudolf Koenig.

I therefore suggest to any non-German speaker: don't be shy, post your contributions (or questions) in English into any of the special places here in the Forum - it is much more likely to get an answer there than here.

Regards

pah

Frankly, the german forum section can't maintain his attitude then.
A new member requesting help there is gonna be shot immediately by a moderator if he has not read the beginners guide or can't help himself by reading it. "Puschel74" jumps directly in to blame you, just waiting for some other people to applaude him.
Have a look here: http://forum.fhem.de/index.php/topic,20483.0.html
or here: http://forum.fhem.de/index.php/topic,20397.0.html

So I'd appreciate to keep the english forum section without having a translated beginners guide.
Maybe also native germans can get help here.

[fruit]

So I'd appreciate to keep the english forum section without having a translated beginners guide.

In my opinion the English section is important as a starting area for newcomers to post. It can be a daunting experience posting on a forum which is mainly in a language one doesn't speak. I'm sure that's how many non-English speakers feel toward the many English language forums too.

In the few months I've been here posts have often been moved to their appropriate sub-forums where the those with relevant knowledge are more likely to see and respond. It might be nice to retain links for those coming later rather than moving threads completely but I don't think we can expect that

I believe the English version of the beginner's guide is being worked on though I've heard nothing from the volunteer for a long time.

[UliM]

So I'd appreciate to keep the english forum section without having a translated beginners guide.
Maybe also native germans can get help here.

Hi,
as much as I can understand your frustration, you should also try to understand the frustraion of others.
Puschel is really helpful - it's not by chance that he's moderating the beginners section.
However, those trying to help expect some effort on the side of the requester. Seen that all support is for free, I personally think that's fair.

Of course you cannot know that literally a hundred people before you showed the attitude of 'dump a question' without showing the courtesy of checking existing docu, check for spelling, making their questions easy to read, providing proper examples etc.  But it did happen. I agree the comment from Puschel74 may seem harsh, but it's just an expression of his frustration - like this post is an expression of yours.

Please reconsider the topic, and maybe you'll come to the conclusion that it won't make much of a difference if you raise your questions in english or german.  It's rather a matter of form than of language

Keep fhem'ing,
Uli

[UliM]

I believe the English version of the beginner's guide is being worked on though I've heard nothing from the volunteer for a long time.

Same same
I did send a request asking how progress looks like - no response. Not sure if we can expect further progress at this stage.
I'm currently working on a new version of the document. Once that is complete (may take a while!) I'll produce an english version - which however I won't keep maintaining with every new german version down the line.

Best, Uli

[createch2]

It's rather a matter of form than of language

In what form would you request a "step by step information" of something you have no clue of? Lets say I have no code that I have tried, no idea what are the pre conditions to make the code working and found no helpful information in the command reference or beginner tutorial?
If you have to apologize for the beginners board moderators rude attitude, I'd double think if this is the way to go. It seems they have the time to talk, they have the patience to read the threads carefully in terms of wrong post formats but cannot provide any help. Neither written nor with links. When the mod gets PMd he's not able to answer the PM (PM didn't contain any technical question, just analyzing the way to work together).

[fruit]

Of course you cannot know that literally a hundred people before you showed the attitude of 'dump a question' without showing the courtesy of checking existing docu, check for spelling, making their questions easy to read, providing proper examples etc.  But it did happen.

Sadly that seems to happen on all forums, probably no matter the language of the poster or forum. There is an immense wealth of knowledge here and many, many helpful posters as well as the software maintainers. We should all do our best not to waste their time.

Searching is not easy in a foreign language but then it's not really very difficult either to translate a few relevant terms into German via google or similar, just takes a few moments and little a bit of effort. I hope any new posters who happen on this thread will try it.

Personally I spent a long time reading and searching here before joining and posting - I think it paid off.

[fruit]

Lets say I have no code that I have tried, no idea what are the pre conditions to make the code working and found no helpful information in the command reference or beginner tutorial?

There are many examples of code for pretty much anything you want I would think. The wikis are excellent short guides too, though it's difficult to find some of them. google fhem wiki <search term> or even google <search term> can be very useful.

I have not witnessed moderator's rude attitudes in my reading but perhaps I have not read what you have. I have seen comments relating to posters lack of using the search function - and I have to say I agree with them.

[H3nr1]

Same same
I did send a request asking how progress looks like - no response. Not sure if we can expect further progress at this stage.
I'm currently working on a new version of the document. Once that is complete (may take a while!) I'll produce an english version - which however I won't keep maintaining with every new german version down the line.

Best, Uli

Hello Uli,

I,m working on the Dutch version. I did send you a email that it would take me some time to finish it. maybe you missed it. I  ran you,re version through google translate and now i,m working on it because google doesn,t do a voor job.
Maybe someone van help

Greets Henri

[createch2]

There are many examples of code for pretty much anything you want I would think. The wikis are excellent short guides too, though it's difficult to find some of them. google fhem wiki <search term> or even google <search term> can be very useful...

Is it possible to take you at your words? Then I'll set up a new thread to get the links what I am looking for?

[Prof. Dr. Peter Henning]

Well, I've not been looking here for some time, and funny things are going on ...

Years ago, when there was just the Google group, I was being somewhat direct towards newbies - because I felt they were wasting my time. At that time Puschel74 established himself as the helpful advocate of newcomers, and flamed me for being blunt - and now he does the same with English speakers 

To be serious:
I recommend NOT to produce translations of the long introductory document. It is impossible to keep an unstructured document in several languages up to date.

Rather, what you should do is the following:

• Request author permissions in the FHEM Wiki
• If you want to translate a part of some manual page, or of the intro document, then take this part out and write it in into a wiki page. Give this a title which allows to identify the section of the longer document, say SECTION4
• Start a new Wiki page as direct copy of the old one, and rename it  - in the example as SECTION4/en when translating into English, or SECTION4/nl
• There are extensions to the Wiki software which allow multilingual setups. I will try to promote these, such that in the end we will have a structured documentation in several languages
• We will then establish a linkage structure between the several pages

While many people here, including myself, have a fair command of other languages, we cannot spare the time to translate documents. However, I feel responsible for semantics of the Wiki, consequently will try to be helpful in establishing a proper structure.

Regards

pah

[akw]

Hi pah,


Some time ago, soulman, me and others decided the FHEMWiki to be german-only because of the maintenance problem.
I started the wiki with an english main page but that was changed later on to reflect the fact that most of the FHEM users come from german speaking countries. (When FHEMWiki was started there was quite a discussion about having a wiki at all, but it turned out to be quite useful, didn't it?
From my experience with my iOS app FHEMobile I know that there is a small (but growing) international FHEM user base, too.
But I am strictly against making the FHEMWiki multilingual, because it's impossible to keep the changes in sync. I tried this with ThinkWiki (which user base is 95% from english speaking countries), but it just didn't work out.
If you want an english speaking FHEMWiki, be free to create a new one, I'll be happy to assist with any tech. issues. (The dot com domain is still available I think
However, I see no problem with translating the existing beginner's pdf's into another language, if anyone is prepared to do that (and got the authors approval of course).

Ciao, akw

[Prof. Dr. Peter Henning]

Well,

if the admin votes "no", this is "NO" - and certainly I will not push this because I lack the time.

However, I strongly reject the arguments given in support of this decision.

First of all, I never asked to translate the whole Wiki - this would be impossible to maintain, even to do because of the low quality of many pages. I still believe that key information (which does not change so much over time) should appear also in English.

Secondly, an unstructured multi-lingual document is much harder to maintain, than a structured one. Proof is given by the fact, that so far all people who wanted to translate the big "intro paper" have given up. I therefore still believe, that this should be split up and become part of the Wiki (in several languages !)

Third, as I have indicated a few times earlier: We do not live in the 20th century, but in the 21st. Sticking to some (intransparent) decision which was made years ago (when FHEM was something completely different) by some small (self-appointed) group is not appropriate when the circumstances are changing so much.

Regards

pah

[Rince]

I do not really get the point here.

Giving the wiki some pages in English, maybe French, why should this be a problem? It will be a problem, if users demand information and guides have to be translated 1:1.
(We have tried this for the commandref, and translating everything 1:1 is kind of pain in the ***)

Imho there is no reason why the information in different languages has to be the same.
Furthermore I don't think translating guides is a pratical way to go.

Instead we should open up the wiki to English articles written by English users for English users. There is no need of a German moderation there at all. Time will tell if an English moderation is necessary.  And if, one or more English users will establish their own moderation team.

Different languages, different information, different moderators. As easy as this.

[rudolfkoenig]

There is another issue: some devices are not available or used in some countries, so there is IMHO not much point in translating everything. An introduction using FS20 on a FRITZ!Box would be a useless for US users.

[Rince]

You are right. The other way round, we could even get some modules for devices only available in the US

I don't know if the EU/US Freihandelsabkommen ever will come to live, but if this was the case, new worlds could open up



So, it looks like a good idea to install a language plugin in our wiki, in order to make it multilingual, doesn't it?

Pah, you could help with this?

[akw]

So, if you really want to do this, there are two options:

We can either
* set up a fresh wiki and use InterWiki links to connect them (like Wikipedia does)
* or use a translation plugin and create english pages in the same wiki (like meta.wikimedia.org does)

Which one is preferred?

Ciao, Arno

[micomat]

No matter which decision will made, i can help translating the pages. I have already translated some parts of the CommandRef

[Prof. Dr. Peter Henning]

If another wiki is sought: I run a Semantic Media Wiki (SMW) on one of my external servers and could provide this as a service.

Regards

pah

[Zrrronggg!]

Hi all,

first of all: some know that  I am actually one of the mentioned admins of the wiki. I don't know how this happened, I guess it started when I had the feeling that the wiki could need some support and did some maintenance work. I guess the first dozen articles or so as well as the first templates are also based on my work, I just wrote down what I finally understood back then. I was a fhem beginner at that time (Even today I guess)

The decision towards a german wiki had 2 aspects:

1. most users where german. I did not see the benefit of writing a whole wiki in (probably only mediocre) english - which IS additional work even for people with good language skills - only to be read by mostly non english speakers.
I have to admit: my writing in english is slower as in german and that would have limited my contribution. At a time where - as mentioned - the usefulness of the wiki was not that clear, my focus was to write down as many information in the wiki I could to get it started. And that was easier in german. And we just guessed that that would be the case for most contributors back then.

2. Maintaining a mulitlingual wiki is much more work. I always had (and have) the feeling, that it is no problem if somebody just writes something in english.

Instead we should open up the wiki to English articles written by English users for English users.

That is actually the case. It is not forbidden or something to do just that. That would not add that much load to the current admins. Even my own page on the wiki where I explain how to get an account is bilingual.
But a true multilingual wiki is something different maintenance wise. Its not even just double the work its more then double. There was a time, where only 2 or 3 persons where doing such admin and maintenance work on the wiki. As a matter of fact I think this still is the case right now.

So the decision to make it basically a german-focused wiki was more due to the limited resources we had/have.
I work for the wiki almost every single day now: adding users, correcting articles, discussing stuff, write as an author, delete obsolete files etc. I know that at least 2 other persons do such work also frequently - and the wiki has only some 250 articles and some 150 users (where only 30 or so are actually active). And as pah pointed out many articles are suboptimal and need rework (some of the stuff I wrote 2 years ago among them).

I guess the current wiki "staff" simply cannot accomplish the additional work of a true bilingual wiki.

if the admin votes "no", this is "NO" - and certainly I will not push this because I lack the time.

Well, the current admins "no" is not an absolute "no". I don't consider myself as the godfather of the wiki or something. I only say: I cannot do it - because of the same lack of time pah quotes. I guess akw feels the same way.

To make a long story short: If we are looking for a true bilingual set up (e.g. with an english main page etc) then my suggestion would be to

set up a fresh wiki and use InterWiki links to connect them (like Wikipedia does)

.

And then a new set of admins - native speakers - must be found to maintain that. Of course it would also need a new set of authors, no matter if they just translate german articles or write new ones from scratch. Also some of the german authors may write a basic translation of their contributions.

This would also solve the problem with he different needs such as fritzbox articles may not make sense in other countries.
They are simply not translated/written then.

[micomat]

1. most users where german. I did not see the benefit of writing a whole wiki in (probably only mediocre) english - which IS additional work even for people with good language skills - only to be read by mostly non english speakers.

Correct, but why not? What do you or we have to lose? Sure it's more work, but in the counterpart, me and some other guys are still translating the commandref into german. Why not going the same way in the Wiki translating things to englisch?

There was a time, where only 2 or 3 persons where doing such admin and maintenance work on the wiki. As a matter of fact I think this still is the case right now.

As the community is growing you shold find more help I guess that the number of contributors will still rise.

I work for the wiki almost every single day now: adding users, correcting articles, discussing stuff, write as an author, delete obsolete files etc. I know that at least 2 other persons do such work also frequently - and the wiki has only some 250 articles and some 150 users (where only 30 or so are actually active).

right, but can you never be responsible for articles you didn't wrote by yourself. you can find obsolete articles even in the big brother wikipedia. thats a fact in wikis.

And then a new set of admins - native speakers - must be found to maintain that. Of course it would also need a new set of authors, no matter if they just translate german articles or write new ones from scratch. Also some of the german authors may write a basic translation of their contributions.

Why? Look at all the wikis in the world. i would guess 90% of them are in the most spoken language of the world: BSE (bad simple englisch). Is it the target to have a perfect Wiki? i guess no. it should help people start with FHEM and give them help with it. nobody cares about grammatical errors. and if so they can correct them

Why talking about FritzBox in the US? Okay, when somebody there want's to use fhem, nice. But i think the focus first should be Europe. And even here, Englisch is the perfect language for.

Markus

[Zrrronggg!]

I actually have the impression, that you did not understood my post.

[micomat]

Okay, where did i go wrong?

[Zrrronggg!]

Okay, where did i go wrong?

Maybe you didn't -  maybe it was my fault (that could be a proof, that my english is not good enough). I just thought that I actually answered almost all of your questions allready.


I tried *several times* now to answer your post in detail but failed, because its more or less always a rewritten version of my first post.

So maybe its the other way round: I don't know what you want to say.

[micomat]

hey no problem, i'm also not a native speaker
but let me sum up, as my work life is more international then local, i'm a supporter of an international version.