Fhem for non-German speakers ?

[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