Re: Translation of numeric values (application gnome-schedule)

[Philip Van Hoof <spamfrommailing freax org>]

On Sun, 2004-06-20 at 15:48 +0200, Ole Laursen wrote:

> This is really something for usability gnome org, I think, but you are
> missing some benefits from using plain numbers. It scales better
> (consider '1 2 3,4,5,13,30 * *') and it gives you the important
> information right away - namely the numbers. They stand out clearly so
> you don't have to parse as much.
> 
> And really, if you think hard about it, I am certain you can come up
> with a good solution, e.g.:
> 
>   At hours 2, 3, at minute 2, at day 4 of the month
>   At hour 2, at day 15 of the month

> Then you need perhaps twenty strings to cover all cases, but that's
> manageable.

I have been thinking about this as a possibility, yes. And it's possible
by only changing lang.py to get it like this. And to be honest I would
also agree with a patch against lang.py that would make it like this.

Especially for the case that you provded: when steps are used. For
example field values like "1,2,3,4", "*\2" and "1-20" are at this moment
not supported for translation to something human-readable.

Perhaps for some language types, the strings would become (much) like my
current implementation. And for other language types the strings would
become like your example. And the application would then keep a
'manageable' list of language-types.

I am keeping all options open for this issue. As long that the
application uses a single line to explain to the user at which frequency
the scheduled task will happen, while that single line should not be a
"difficult to understand" format. The format of the crontab itself is
not what I expect the user to understand. Also (IMHO) some wording
around that format is not adding much to the usability:

So "minute:1 hour:2 day:3 month:4 every weekday" is honestly not really
want I want. And it's not really making it more easy for a normal user: 
	"The user still has to 'compute' the frequency."


> It's of course your decision, but most people probably won't bother
> with your module if they have to hack Python to get it working (not
> necessarily me, I happen like Python). And it also sounds like a
> maintenance nightmare. Consider having to fix 60 different
> implementations when you need to change something.

I understand that thats what the consequences are. I am, however,
prepared to go ahead and try it. Maybe the maintenance will not be that
hard after all and maybe many other people will see this as a challenge
to get it supported for their language :-)? Yet, I am open for
modifications like you proposed above.

A lot people in the OpenSource community are doing what they do to show
other people (like their employer and friends) their skills. I want to
exploit that. I really do. Yeah I even want to abuse it if necessary.

> It does require you to have the guts to throw out your nice cron
> translator, though. :-)

Yeahp :). And I do have the guts.



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos
home: me at freax dot org
work: Philip dot VanHoof at cronos dot be
http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org