Bobbie Wang and Cliff Liang have translated the Eclipse User Interface Guidelines article into Chinese. I obviously don’t have my browser configured properly, because it appears as a bunch of characters that look very little like Chinese (lots and lots of umlats) with a occassional word that I can actually read. I’ve been told (and have to take on faith) that it appears quite well in properly-configured browsers. Let me know if your experience is contrary. I find having translations like this particularly cool, and really wish that I could say more about it, but since I can’t read Chinese (not for lack of trying; perhaps I should actually learn Chinese first), there’s not much else to say about the translation…
You can find the translation on the Eclipse Corner Articles landing page. If you scroll about halfway down the page, you’ll see a little Chinese flag with some comments next to it. I’m curious to know if you think this is a good way to represent translations (we’re looking into have some other articles translated). Should translated articles be grouped with the original or should they be considered new articles? Do you like the idea of the flag? Is it clear enough what it means? Is there anything I need to do to make it more clear?
The article itself is a pretty handy resource if you’re building Eclipse plug-ins. One of the huge challenges of building plug-ins is making them integrate well into the environment. While the Eclipse platform provides a great integration point, the flexibility it provides can be a bit of a curse. You can get away with a lot in your plug-ins and–if you’re not careful–you can end up making a real mess of the user experience.
Anyway… take a look at this article. Keep it in mind and refer to it often when you’re building plug-ins. Your users (and the Eclipse community at large) will thank you for it.
