Re: [Koha-devel] translation complaint...

[Rachel Hamilton-Williams]

Hi

> Just some thoughts. 
> My main impression is though, that it is the process that is wrong, not the
> method. IE the way templates are being maintained is bad, not the idea of 
> using
> templates.

Just to add to this.

The assumptions that we made at the begining of Koha probably really reflect 
our bias at Katipo (as both a graphic design and programming house), and I 
think that experience over the last couple of years has proved some of those 
assumptions to be wrong.

First Assumption:  The way that we set up Koha for HLT would not suit anyone 
else.  So not only would you not want to use the same language, but that you 
wouldn't like the same colours, where things were on the page, even what showed 
up on the page.  THUS we made no effort to extract the language from the HTML 
(And barely from the perl, although others have worked on that) because we 
assumed you would want to change *everything*.   

We continue to assume that people *should* be able to change all those things 
if they want to, hence the move to HTML template.

Second Assumption: There is nothing wrong with that :-)

First Surprise: People change very little.  Our bread and butter work at Katipo 
is providing people with user interfaces which tailor a programme/website or 
whatever to their particular "style".  I have just now actaully redone the 
basic templates for the OPAC into something more "generic" because I've 
realised otherwise you have a bunch of HLT clones, and that my naff code is 
causing you all so much heartache.

See opac-templates.koha.org for the new look. I have *almost* all the images 
out of it other than the format  ones, and I think all text is now really text.

To change the look/text of your site now you'd need to change about 10 template 
files, some includes for the navigation, and the stylesheet.

Cheers
Rachel
_____________________________________________________________

Rachel Hamilton-Williams             Katipo Communications            
WEBMISTRESS                          ph  021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 
mailto:address@hidden           PO Box 12487, Wellington
http://www.katipo.co.nz              New Zealand
Koha Open Source Library System
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