We are developing a web application which is available in 3 languages.
There are these key-value pairs to translate everything. At this moment we use Excel (key, german, french, english) for this. But this does not work well ... if there is more than 1 person editing this file, you have no chance to automatically merge the different files.
Is there a good (and free) tool which can handle this job?
--- additional information ---
(This is a STRUTS application) But the question is how to manage these kinds of information in general (or at least in an conveinient way, which also supports multiple users editing this single file ("mergeable" filetypes))
Why not use gettext and manage separate .po files? See that blog entry.
If you can store this information in plain text then you will be able to use a version control system like subversion to help you with merging changes. Subversion is free.
The free guide (the "Red Book") to subversion gives a fairly good explanation of how this kind of merging works.
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.basic.vsn-models.html#svn.basic.vsn-models.copy-merge
EDIT: Another thought - if you really want to stay using a spreadsheet - Google Docs supports simultaneous editing of a spreadsheet. You could import your existing spreadsheet and get your multi-user merging wishes for free with very little change to how you work.
Good Question.
There are some "Best Practice" depending on what you actually code in (java, ms-windows c#).
I solved this (but I think there must be a better way) by using a SQL db instead of excel file, and a wrote a plug for VS (VB6,........,..., emacs) that was able to insert new keys into the db without going to round trip with version control. The keys are the developers name of what they think is a best guess for a label. (key => save, sv => "spara", no => "", en => "save").
This db can then be generated as a module, class, obj, txt, to appropriate code(platform)
and can be accessed, depending on the ide, so in c#, bt,label = corelang.save;
Someone else can then do all the language stuff, and then we just update the db and rerun the generation to the platform resources.
After years of seeing localization done, including localization at large companies like Sony. I can only say the "standard" is Excel :)
There are tons of good ideas around, and probably many better ways to do it, but in real-life excel seems to be the best/cost effective solution that doesn't require training or making complex new tools to get the job done.
Found out, that Intellij Idea (at leas in version 7 and 8) has an editor for application resources. But it is not free at all. And it does not scale for bigger resource files with more than 1.000 keys.
Another good choice would be to use Google's spreadsheets ... for those who don't know it - it is like an "online Excell web-application". It can handle concurrent access from multiple users. Yay! But sadly, it comes from Google. This makes it impossible to be used in commercial projects.
So,
still searching...
cheers,
mana
Related
I have an email account whose sole purpose it is to store interesting and useful links to programming articles, code, and blog posts. It has become a little knowledgebase of sorts. I can even do a search on it, which is pretty cool.
However, after using this account for a couple of years, I now have 775 links, and it has become this big blob of amorphous information, most of which I have never looked at again. I take comfort in the fact that, if I really needed to, I could find something in there again, if I even remember putting it in there in the first place. But it has developed a "smell," if you will.
How are you organizing your programming library of cool stuff? Do you have a system or tool, and is it better than the way I'm doing it?
I would use something that is made for storing bookmarks. I use delicious.com for all of my bookmarks. The tagging system works perfectly for technology sites because you can tag each page with a specific language or tech abbreviation. This coupled with the Delicious Bookmarks plugin will make it very easy to tag sites and get back to them.
Use one word or abbreviations for languages: java c# vb.net python
Use acronyms for technologies: wpf wcf
I used to use the standard bookmark system in the browser but since I bounce around through various machines and browsers throughout the day I started to use bookmark synchronizers. Both Foxmarks and the one that google came out with. But neither I was completely satisfied with. Plus delicious has a great web interface to it as a decent api to extend for your own purpose.
IMHO, using Evernote to store this information is great.
1) you can go back and search through it easily
2) organize by tags and "notebooks collections"
3) available on multiple platforms (even mobile)
4) available as browser plugins (for direct archiving in-browser)
The only drawback is it's copy-paste functionality is a little lacking (it sometimes doesn't import/display the CSS styles correctly).
Otherwise, it's a great alternative to store web "bookmarks" (and also archive the content at the same time).
I know this question seems subjective but it's really pretty simple. As a long term user, and part time contributor to SubSonic I'm interested in what the community thinks would be the single best way to improve it.
So what's your opinion, how would you make SubSonic even better? What one thing would make you more likely to use/recommend/evangelise/stop complaining about it?
As I said I know this is a bit subjective and may get closed but as SO is the main support forum for SubSonic I think this could be a useful way to solicit opinion and/or contributions.
To keep this from turning into a general discussion here's the rules:
No omnibus wishes
No duplicate wishes
Up-vote those you agree with rather than re-posting them
Ability to run in MediumTrust out of the box
In all honesty the biggest thing thats lacking is solid documentation and HowTo's
Its got better but I think it needs a lot more.
Ability to automatically map collections of other objects, like Fluent NHibernate does.
When SubSonic throws an exception that isn't clear, I'd like to be able to use Google or some other mechanism to discover more information about how to keep my development effort moving forward. Right now it's too easy to get into a situation where you have to go spelunking into the SubSonic source code since SubSonic doesn't seem to be very proactive when the user goes off the "happy path".
This critique is hardly specific to SubSonic. Many (most?) software products suffer from this same problem. I have not really had this problem with NHibernate though, which is SubSonic's most clear competitor.
Faster and higher quality releases
Binary types for SimpleRepository (Images)
Left Outer Joins
Support more database-independent code generation...
What I mean by this is that it is truly a real pain if your application wants to talk to different databases (e.g. SQL Server and Oracle) and you want to only have one set of generated DAL objects. I would love it if you had the option of specifying that any SQL code that gets sent to the DB would be as compatible with most engines as possible, since right now if you generated your objects targeting SQL Server then all queries will be of the form:
SELECT [schema].[table_name] FROM ....
Sadly, this does not work in Oracle, so basically you're out of luck there.
Perhaps this isn't a huge concern for most of you, but I'm currently writing a commercial app that touts one of its main features as being able to run on various database engines just by changing its configuration and I chose SubSonic because I thought it could handle the job pretty easily, but I'm honestly having second thoughts now because of all the hoops I may have to jump through just to get this to work correctly under different environments.
Support MS Access ,Postgres and FireBird database :)....
I am looking for a good way to keep a design document up to date with the latest decisions.
We are a small team (two developers, game designer, graphic designer, project manager, sales guy). Most of our projects last a couple of months. At the start of the project a design is made but we generally find ourselves making changes or new decisions throughout the project. Most of these changes are improvements, so we want to keep our process like that. (If the changed design results in more time needed this is generally taken care of, so that part is OK)
However, at the moment we have no nice way of capturing the changes to the initial design document and this results in the initial design quickly being abandoned as a source while coding. This is of course a waste of effort.
Currently our documents are OpenOffice/Word, and the best way to track changes in those documents will probably be adding a changelist to the top of the document and making the changes in the text in parallel — not really an option I'd think as ideal.
I've looked at requirements management software, but that looks way to specialized. The documents could be stored in subversion but I think that is a bit too low level to give insight in the changes.
Does anyone know a good way to track changes like these and keep the design document a valuable resource throughout the project?
EDIT: At the moment we mostly rely on changes to the original design being put in the bugtracker, that way they are at least somewhere.
EDIT: Related question
Is version control (ie. Subversion) applicable in document tracking?
I've found a wiki with revision logging works well as a step-up from Word documents, provided the number of users is relatively small. Finding one that makes it easy to make quick edits is helpful in ensuring it's kept up to date.
Both openoffice and word include capaiblities for showing/hiding edits to your document. Assuming there's resistance to changing, then that's your best option - either that or export to text and put it into any source control software.\
Alternatively, maintain a separate (diffable using the appropriate tool) document for change-description text, and save archive versions at appropriate points in time.
This problem has been a long standing issue in our programming shop too. The funny thing is that programmers tend to look at this from the wrong optimization angle: "keep everything in one place". In my opinion, you have two main issues:
The changes' descriptions must be easy to read ("So what's new?")
The process should be optimized for writing of the specification to agree upon, and then get to work already!
Imagine how this problem is solved in another environment: government law making. The lawbook is not rewritten with "track changes" turned on every time the government adds another law, or changes one...
The best way is to never touch a released document. Don't stuff everything into the same file, you'll get the:
dreaded version history table
eternal status "draft",
scattered inconsistencies,
horribly rushed sentences, and
foul smelling blend of authors' styles
Instead, release an addendum, describing only the changes in detail, and possibly replacing full paragraphs/pages of the original.
With the size of our project, this can never work, can it?
In my biggest project so far, I released one base spec, and 5 consecutive addenda. Each of around 5 pages. Worked like a charm!
I don't know any good, free configuration management tools, but why not place your design under source control? Just add it to SVN, CVS, or whatever you are using. This is good because:
1) It is always up to date (if you check it in, of course)
2) It is centralized
3) You can keep track of changes by using the built-in compare feature, available in almost any source control system
It may not be the 'enterprisish' solution you'd want, but you are a small team of developers anyway, so for that situation, it is more than perfect.
EDIT: I see now that you already mentioned a source control system, my mistake. Still, I think it should work well.
Use Google Docs. Its free, web based, muti-user in real time, you can choose who has access to your documents, and keeps versioning. You can also upload all your word documents and it will transform them for you.
For more information: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour2.html
Recently I've been doing lots of weekend coding, and have began to really need a bugtracker as things are gaining speed. This is probably the worst case scenario because I basically have to let things cool down over the week,so I simply can't remember the bugs in my head. So far I've been using a text file to jot down bugs,but I'd rather use something a bit better.
The biggest points here are ease of use and very little setup time.Don't want to spend more than an hour learning the basics and trying to install something. Also in my case I'm on a Mac so that would help, but solutions for other platforms are welcomed as they will likely help others.
FogBugz has a student/startup edition that's free indefinitely, for 2 or less users.
Personally, I use Excel. (Wait, come back, I'm not crazy!) For a bigger / team project, I've gotten a ton of mileage out of Bugzilla, but that tends to be kind of overkill for a one-person project.
But, a well-organized spreadsheet, with columns for things like "status", "description", "code module", "resolved date," etc, gets you pretty close to what you'd need for a small project. Sorting a spreadsheet by column isn't anywhere near a search, but its a whole lot better than "find in text file."
Heck, if you use Google docs rather than excel, you can even publish the thing as an RSS feed and get it anywhere.
And, the major advantage is that the setup time and learning curve are both effectively nil.
Addendum: And of course, the instant your "One-Person Bug Tracker" becomes a "Two-Person Bug Tracker" you must switch to something better. Bugzilla, FogBugz, anything. Trust me, I've been there.
Trac or Redmine are both pretty good. I don't know how easy they are to set up on a Mac.
It's worth mentioning that FogBugz also has a free version for up to 2 users, which would suit you. It is hosted so there is no installation and you can use something like Fluid to access it in its own window.
I don't think you need a full blown bugtracker for your scenario.
Try tiddly wiki, store each bug in a tiddler and give them tags like 'open' or 'closed'.
There is no installation required (only one html file), and it's very easy to use.
And platform neutral.
If you're working on a LAMPP stack, then for ease of setup and use I would probably recommend Mantis. It's written in PHP / MySQL and the only installation involved was specifying where the database should be created and what credentials should be used.
Oh, and its FOSS.
I would suggest Omnigroup's Omnifocus - it's an excellent task tracker, and if you just make the mental leap from bug to task, I think it works famously for one man projects as well as being an excellent way to organize your no doubt burgeoning task queue.
Eclipse has a really interesting system--I don't know why so few people seem to know about it.
It's tied in with their to-do list. It gives you the ability to enter bugs with as much or as little info as you like. You can tie it to versioning or an external bug tracker if you like. It's a decent bug tracker in itself.
The real trick is how it works with your source code.
Before you begin work you select a bug from the list. All the time you're coding, it tracks what files you are editing. It can close old tabs for you, and will also highlight areas of the source tree that you have modified a lot.
The nice thing is, you can go back to any bug you've edited an you will get your "Environment" back. Not only all your notes and stuff, but the same tabs will open up and the same sections of code in the navigator will be highlighted.
Also eclipse works with virtually any language, it's not just restricted to Java...
let me put in a good word for ditz - it's a bit bare-bones, but it has the invaluable feature that bugs are checked into your repository. it's also very easy to use once you get used to its way of doing things
You can use fogbugz for free if you're a one man team.
It's super easy to use and quick to learn.
They made it so that bugs are really easy to enter, no mandatory fields.
I'm the author of BugTracker.NET mentioned in another post. If I were looking for a tracker for JUST ONE PERSON with MINIMUM hassle, I'd use FogBugz, because it's hosted. No installation, no need to worry about backups.
But, what are you doing about version control? Don't you have to worry about that too, and backing that up? If so, consider something like Unfuddle or CVSDude where you can get BOTH Subversion and Trac, or Subversion and Fogbugz.
I use Mantis at home and I'm happy with it. It can be a pain in the arse to get it working so you can choose to download a free and ready-made VM installation. Cannot be easier than that,
Maybe a spreadsheet would be the next logical step? I know it sounds really un-sexy, but if you're the only user, you don't have to worry much about others mucking it up, and it adds a few basic features over a text file like sorting. Then if you later need to graduate to something RDBMS-backed, you would likely have a feasible import path. I just know that for me, when working by myself, I don't tend to get around to putting bugs in anything that requires more care and feeding than that (of course when working with others the collaborative needs make a more defined repository a requirement, but that's a different story).
EDIT: After noting the availability of free, hosted access to FogBugz, I'm re-thinking the bar for care and feeding...
RT from BestPractical is great.
I also get a lot of mileage out of just keeping a list of items in a text file with vi, if I can express them all in one line. This is usually for many small todo items on a single component or task.
I've tried bugtracker.net and even though it's a little bit rough on the edges, it's free and was built with ASP.NET:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66812
Are you using a source control repository as well? If not, you really should, even though you're only a one-man team.
My personal preference is to use a VMWare Virutal Application (free) that offers no-hassle setup gives you access to both Trac and Subversion. You can find many different virual appliances through searching. Here is one example of getting a Trac/SVN virtual appliance up and running:
http://www.rungeek.com/blog/archives/how-to-setup-svn-and-trac-with-a-virtual-appliance/
Trac is an excellent project management tool that sports a bug tracker, wiki, and integrated source control management. It's adaptable to your needs, and fits me very well personally.
I use bugzilla for this purpose. Plus for me was that it has integration with Eclipse (precisely with Mylyn). FogBuzz has it to but AFAIK it is nonfree.
Plus it sits on my laptop so I can code and add/remove bugs when offline (it was biggest disadvantage of hosted solutions for me)
Installation was not a problem in Ubuntu (and any debian-based distro I suppose).
I dig ELOG in those cases, it's more of a personal blog, but it's easy to handle and install, the data is local on your computer and you can search all entries via fulltext. Always sufficed for me.
If you have a Windows box with IIS and MSSQL (including SQL Server Express), you should look at Bugtracker.net. It is free and open source (you get the source code), and it is extensible.
Even if you are a one man shop, having a free bug tracking system with this much power will allow you to grow over time, because it is fairly easy to add future users into the system.
You can also customize it for the look of your organization, business or product.
Ontime 2008 by Axosoft is free for a single user licence. It's industrial strength and will give you alot more that just bug tracking!
http://www.axosoft.com
Jira which now has free personal licenses.
I am using leo for this purpose. To be more specific, its cleo plugin.
Of course you might need to spend some time to get used to leo, but it will pay off.
A flat text file is just a list, an Excel spreadsheet is a two-dimensional list.
leo lets you keep the data in a tree! And it also has clones.
Any good recommendations for a platform agnostic (i.e. Javascript) grid control/plugin that will accept pasted Excel data and can emit Excel-compliant clipboard data during a Copy?
I believe Excel data is formatted as CSV during "normal" clipboard operations.
dhtmlxGrid looks promising, but the online demo's don't actually copy contents to my clipboard!
I'm currently using dhtmlxGrid and we have the Excel copy/paste functionality working. dhtmlXGrid is the most full featured javascript grid package that I've found.
On their website, dhtmlXGrid claims to support Clipboard functionality in the Professional version. (However, I noticed the Sample on their site isn't working on my Firefox. EDIT: It's probably the permissions issue that Nathan mentioned.)
In any case, we had to do some extra work to get the exact Excel copy and paste functionality we wanted. We essentially had to override some of their functionality to get the desired behavior. Their support was pretty good in helping us come up with a solution.
So to answer your question, you should be able to get them to support copy and paste if you purchase the Professional version. I'm just warning you that it may take some additional work to fine tune that behavior.
Overall, I'm happy with dhtmlXGrid. We use a lot of their features. Their support is pretty good. They usually take one day to respond since they are in Europe (I think). And Javascript is by its very nature open source so I can always dive in when I need to.
Not an answer, but a warning: my company bought the 2007 Infragistics ASP.NET controls just for the Grid, and we regret that choice.
The quality of API is horrible (in our opinion at least), making it very hard to program against the grid (for example, inconsistent naming conventions, but this is just an inconvenience, we have complaints about the object model as well).
So I can't say that I know of a better option, I just know I will give a try to something else before paying for Infragistics products again (and the email support we got was horrible as well).
I was wrestling with this problem several years ago (2004 I think). We ran into the problem that Firefox doesn't allow scripts to read the clipboard by default (but you can grant access to the clipboard).
There's other ways of reading the clipboard data as well...Flash, for instance, can read the clipboard. There's a good article on ajaxian to explain how do to this behind the scenes.
In the end, we couldn't find a web-based Grid that fit the bill, so we had to create our own in a mixture of Actionscript and Javascript.
I'd hate to be Captain Obvious here...but what about a plain old .NET Gridview control? You can copy Excel data into it and out of it...and you can run it on any system with the .NET platform installed.
http://dhtmlx.com/dhxdocs/doku.php?id=dhtmlxgrid:clipboard_operations