localisation for debtags

[Erich Schubert]

Hi,
I don't have much time to work on Debian these days, sorry.

> What's missing are those links on debtags.alioth.debian.org or on
> packages.debian.org. Important for Linex, packages.d.o now is localized, but
> the debtags cloud is not yet.

The debtags cloud is mostly a gateway from JSON (for the Ajax cloud)
to the Debtags daemon.

The JS code only does the rendering of the cloud and click handling;
it doesn't actually process the data (we want to keep data transfers
low, after all).

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debtags/cgi-bin/cloud?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
This is the code for the gateway. As you can see, there is not very
much happening here, it's mostly related to caching. Default cache
time is 10 minutes, and data is kept as gzip streams since that saves
bandwidth and is understood by any javascript capable browser.

In my opinion, the best place to add l18n here is at the Debtags
daemon. This is where the tag and packages data is actually processed,
and where updates can best be synchronized.

However, for larger user bases (and fewer updates), the caching might
also be worth doing differently. When the clouds setup is better
integrated with the Debtags daemon, it could automatically expire
caches when needed only, and not use a fixed caching interval such as
the 10 minutes in our current setup. Also some data could be
precalculated, especially the top level data.

There are more changes needed for a full end-user debtags cloud IMHO.
Such as working back/forward buttons in the browser. :-)  There is a
reason why it's pointing to the Debtags edit pages and not
packages.debian.org :-)

When going for maximum user experience, it would maybe also make sense
to do a 'wizard' like interface exploiting the Debtags data. E.g.
"What type of user interface do you want?" and then a choice of
interfaces.

best regards,
Erich Schubert
--
    erich@(mucl.de|debian.org)      --      GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C    (o_
  To understand recursion you first need to understand recursion.   //\
  Wo befreundete Wege zusammenlaufen, da sieht die ganze Welt für   V_/_
        eine Stunde wie eine Heimat aus. --- Herrmann Hesse