Page MenuHomePhabricator

Multilingual SemanticMediaWiki
Closed, DuplicatePublic

Description

Profile Information

Name: Prachatos Mitra
Email: pmlinediter at live.com / prachatosmitra at gmail.com
IRC handle(s): Pmlineditor / _Pmlineditor_ or similar with cloak wikimedia/Pmlineditor
Location: Kolkata, India
Typical working hours: 5 - 9 PM till first week of June with significantly more time on Sundays & Mondays, 11 AM - 9PM (mostly) for the rest of the period, possibly extending for couple of hours depending on requirement. I'll usually be available in IRC as long as I'm online and on my laptop, so I can fix things if pinged

Proposal

Synopsis and Process

Semantic MediaWiki is an extension for MediaWiki which adds semantic annotations which allows data in a wiki to be easy to search, organize and browse. SMW would benefit from being multilingual so that users working in multiple languages can use essentially the same property / form etc. without requiring to use English in between. This can be done by using the MediaWiki Translate extension.

When Semantic Forms have been localized, users will be able to decide whether to make a page (form, template etc) translatable and Translate extension will handle the rest. The language for displaying will be decided using UniversalLanguageSelector.

The steps for this would be the following:

  1. Fix bugs related to Translate in Semantic Forms (e.g. T49510). This will help in getting a better idea of the codebases for both the extensions and in the next part of the project.
  1. Enhancement of Special:CreateForm: The approach can be similar to what CentralNotice does in BannerMessageGroup.php, that is, generate a group of message definitions for the Translate extension to handle and use a global variable to check if translation is enabled or not and display the form labels accordingly. So, on using Special:CreateForm, the user can choose to make a multilingual form. Accordingly, the message group will be sent for translation, otherwise, the form will be marked as not requiring translation. Other Create* pages can be probably produce localized output similarly. We can add a checkbox for the user who is using Special:Create* to mark a page for translation, otherwise, an option to allow translation later can be made. I will focus on the first option for the project. Along with this, updating forms using edit with form should be able to handle such multilingual labels.
  1. Handling of properties: A message group can also be registered for property names for localization. Handling multiple equivalent names for a single property is a different issue. Trying to match all translations is probably going to be inefficient. While property names are not usually displayed to the end-user, some queries can display property names, for instance, adding property names in Special:Ask, such as ?Located in will also display the name Located in the header of the table as well. In this specific case, we may just use the property name entered by the user without searching for translations, but there can be cases where we might need to search for the translated property name.

Possible Mentors

@Yaron_Koren, @Nemo_bis, @Nikerabbit

Deliverables

  1. Localized forms, i.e. user can select forms to mark for translation and translate them with Special:Translate and ability to easily update such forms
  2. Localization of other Special:Create* pages
  3. Localized property names
  4. Marking all translations of a property as equivalent and processing queries accordingly

Timeline

PeriodTask
April 27-May 25Familiarization with SemanticBundle code (particularly Semantic Forms) and Translate extension. Finding out specific bugs relating to i18n in SMW and preferably fixing them.
May 25Official GSoC coding begins
May 25-June 8Resolving blockers for MSMW
June 8 - June 21Working on enhancing Special:CreateForm to allow localization
June 21 - July 12Similar changes for other Special:Create* pages and localizing property names
July 12 - August 2Handling SMW queries for localized property names
August 2 - August 9Wrapping up and writing documentation where required
August 9 - EndTesting, bug fixing etc.

Participation

  • I have been using IRC for a long time, so that will be the place where I can communicate, on channels such as #mediawiki-dev, #semantic-mediawiki and #wikimedia-dev
  • To communicate with mentors, I'll use IRC, email or Conpherence, pending T91392
  • I'll be adding weekly reports to some subpage of my MediaWiki userpage

About me

  • Education completed or in progress: 1st year, Computer Science and Engineering undergrad, studying in a college in Kolkata
  • How did you hear about this program?: Mailing list (wikitech-l)
  • Will you have any other time commitments, such as school work, another job, planned vacation, etc., during the duration of the program?: I will have college exams for the last couple of weeks of May and possibly the first of June, but I'll be able to contribute in between the exams
  • We advise all candidates eligible to Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach Program for Women to apply for both programs. Are you planning to apply to both programs and, if so, with what organization(s)? Only Wikimedia and only GSoC
  • We don't just care about your project -- you are a person, and that matters to us! What drives you? What makes you want to make this the most awesomest wiki enhancement ever? I have been editing various WM projects for almost 6 years now, but hadn't contributed to coding until recently. GSoC will provide me an opportunity to get to know this area and work on doing something awesome. MSMW is important for SMW and by extension semantic web as a vast number of languages apart from English is used to search and store content in the web.
  • You don't need to write out your life story (we can read your blog if we want that), but we want to know a little about what makes you tick. Are you a Wikipedia addict wanting to make your own experience better? Did a wiki with usability problems run over your dog, and you're seeking revenge? :-) What does making this project happen mean to you?: I have been editing Wikimedia projects for 6 years[1] and have been active in editing Wikimedia wikis and promotion & outreach events offwiki. As I mentioned previously, I would love to contribute to MW as that is something I haven't done before

Past experience

Patches I have submitted:

  • Microtask - translate extension bug: T69671 (merged)
  • VipsScaler bug: T93481
  • Add field in Special:MultiLock: T93731

Working on:

  • Translate not working in SemanticForm: T49510 (could not reproduce bug)
  • Trying to set up automatic message group registration when creating a form

[1]: CentralAuth

Event Timeline

Similar changes for other Special:Create* pages and localizing property names
Handling SMW queries for localized property names

See my comments here.

Translate not working in SemanticForm: T49510

Thanks, let us know when you progress in fixing this (or in determining for sure that it's already fixed).

Hi, I'll be working on this and will follow up in a couple of days