DCSS Text Improvement Taskforce

[galehar]

- automatic updates from trunk with current text, new monsters, items and so forth

That is totally feasible. As I said, the wiki format is easy to parse and generate. jpeg, there can't be conflicts, we're not working on the same columns. When trunks change we update the "current description" column, and when the "new description" columns is ready, we update trunk. The automation stops at a dev local repository. There's still someone doing a final review before committing the changes and pushing them.

- a system for easily finding recent changes
- changes labelled with name of changer

This is very easy with the wiki. You can see the diff from each edit along with the author. We can also ask contributors to put their signature in the "notes" field.

- a system for making requests for improvements to a piece of text

How about this: We replace the review field by a status field. When it's empty, it means the current description hasn't been checked. If it's fine, change the status to OK. If it needs improvement, change it to RS (Request Submission). Once the contributor has put a new description, he also changes the status to RR (Request Review). Once reviewed, it either go back to RS if it's no good, or is changed to RC (Request Commit).
This way, it's easy for everyone to search what to work on. Initially, someone goes through all the descriptions and set their status to OK or RS. Contributors search for RS lines, reviewers for RR lines, and the update script for RC lines.

- an editing interface that is easier to use than the dev wiki one

Editing the wiki is really simple. The tricky part is how to handle line breaks, I still have to make it better. When all is in order, the process will be: type your description/quote in a text editor. Replace all new lines by \\ followed by at least one space. Copy/paste it in the right cell.
I don't think we can make it better, but if anyone has some dokuwiki skills and/or know some editing plugin, please yell.

Do you have any plans for the smaller description sets for species, skills and spells?

MarvinPA already edited the skill descriptions recently.

[nicolae]

Spell descriptions could probably use a few tweaks. (There's still a couple spells that reference the caster's gender explicitly, like Ignite Poison, and I understand we're getting away from that.)

Idea: There are hymns associated with the gods, written by DTIT contributors, which (I think) are intended to show up as quotes when clicking on altars. Could something like that be done for spells? An in-universe flavor quote, written in flowery grimoire style, as if actual "instructions" on how to cast the spell written by the spell's originator (like the old-school mages who have all those spells named for 'em).

[Grimm]

- a system for easily finding recent changes
- changes labelled with name of changer

Isn't that what a wiki does automatically? Unless you mean to include changes taking place in trunk, in which case not so much. Might be useful to set up a system akin to the documentation, i.e. that descriptions and translations are only ever transferred from the wiki to the repository, never vice versa.

I haven't spent a lot of time on wikis so they could be what I'm after. Google Docs just sends you a message saying "there have been some changes" and you have to scroll through looking for the coloured fields yourself. Fine for small documents but not for large ones.

Maybe translation/text should occur only on major releases, and not try to keep up with trunk.

- a system for making requests for improvements to a piece of text

Once the translations get going, I expect the bug tracker to get flooded with bug reports about typos and grammar errors in all the languages available. I bring this up here because the two issues might be related.

A separate grammar bug tracker would IMO be ideal.

- an editing interface that is easier to use than the dev wiki one

Hmm... not sure what you mean. Tables and formatting are a problem in editing, I admit, and it would be helpful if there was a better way to handle those. (Maybe find some way to get this to work without tables, just a simple header and then under sub-headers, the original text and the translation/updated description.) Is that what you mean?

I mean a WYSIWYG UI as opposed to the taggy wiki interface. I think I am just favouring what I'm familiar with - I could get used to the wiki.

The Items page is what we're currently working on. Dungeon features, Uniques, and Gods are the next three, in that order.

Do you have any plans for the smaller description sets for species, skills and spells? Personally, I consider these more important than the flavour descriptions of features and items, so I would start out with translating these, but of course there's little point to doing that if they get completely rewritten afterwards.

I hadn't considered those. I had a look and they seem all right as is - does anyone want to see them changed?

[galehar]

A separate grammar bug tracker would IMO be ideal.

Please, not yet another place...
How about a Text category on mantis for spelling, grammar, typos,..

[galehar]

So, what's happening here? Damn, it's been awfully quiet. Are you guys bored with the painful interface? You should try a transifex fix.
Maybe I can import some google docs data. Do you have anything going on?

[Grimm]

It's basically me procrastinating finishing the items tab. Not to many other people have been contributing lately.

I'll get those new descriptions up on transifex like you asked soon too.

I have noticed that a lot of the new quotes in the game don't have the detailed citation information we found for them. This is a shame. When the tabs are all done and submitted I'll go through the .txts and double check everything.

[nicolae]

It's basically me procrastinating finishing the items tab. Not to many other people have been contributing lately.

My energy level waxes and wanes drastically, but I'll try to get back in the game.

Also, is it just me, but when I look at quotes in current trunk tiles I see upside-down question marks instead of quotes. Is this on my end or is it a bug?

[Grimm]

I see those too.

[nicolae]

I see those too.

Is the description file using smart quotes instead of just plain old quotes? That might be it.

[galehar]

Also, is it just me, but when I look at quotes in current trunk tiles I see upside-down question marks instead of quotes. Is this on my end or is it a bug?

We use real unicode quotes now, and local tiles doesn't support unicode properly yet. It works fine in console and webtiles.

[Grimm]

Ideally the quotations wouldn't have quote marks at all.

[galehar]

Ideally the quotations wouldn't have quote marks at all.

why not? Isn't the point of quotes to mark quotations? And Ideally, tiles would support unicode. With the translations, it's becoming crucial that they do.

[Grimm]

Because quotation marks are redundant. The quotations will eventually all be on a separate screen, and the citation line below will clearly mark them as quotations. "This makes them look like speech", which they're not.

[JeffQyzt]

Of course, there could be quotations that enclose other quotations, thus still necessitating the inclusion of quote characters in the text.

[Grimm]

That's true, there already are such quotes.

[galehar]

Speaking of quotes, I'm polishing the transifex scripts, and I'm wondering which ones of the description files should be used to generate the quote file (to have placeholder entries in transifex to allow new quotes to be submitted).
I started by putting them all, but at least commands, backgrounds and species should be removed. Maybe ability and spells too, not sure. Opinions?

[Dingbat]

I'm halfway done a hymn for Zin and will start one for Fedhas soon.

The grammar for the descriptions of the altars is a little wonky. I'll work on that too.

[Grimm]

Speaking of quotes, I'm polishing the transifex scripts, and I'm wondering which ones of the description files should be used to generate the quote file (to have placeholder entries in transifex to allow new quotes to be submitted).
I started by putting them all, but at least commands, backgrounds and species should be removed. Maybe ability and spells too, not sure. Opinions?

In my opinion quotes should be limited to:

branches.txt
features.txt
items.txt
monsters.txt
unident.txt

[Dingbat]

I just noticed that the quotation for mermaids in the spreadsheet is about sirens. Is that ideal, given that sirens also exist in the game?

If you can find a good mermaid quote, put that in for mermaid and switch the current quote to siren.

I believe I've located an adequate quotation on mermaids from Shahrazad's One Thousand and One Nights/The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night/Arabian Nights.

Translated by John Payne (1814-1818)

'Are there then other cities than this in the sea?' asked the fisherman, and the merman said, 'There are many.' 'And is there a Sultan over you in the sea?' asked the fisherman. 'Yes,' answered the merman. Then said Abdallah, 'O my brother, I have indeed seen many marvels in the sea!' 'And what hast thou seen of the marvels of the sea?' quoth the merman. 'Hast thou not heard the saying, "The marvels of the sea are more in number than the marvels of the land?"' 'True,' answered the fisherman and fell to gazing upon the women, whom he saw having faces like moons and hair like women's hair, but their hands and feet were in their bellies and they had tails like fishes' tails.

So far I haven't found a corresponding Arabic excerpt. This one is from the 945th night; the wikisource's Arabic version only goes until 920.

EDIT: Huh. I swear, five hours ago the quotation for mermaid on the google doc was about sirens and not a mermaid... someone must beat me to it while I was digging around looking for this passage. There's is pretty good.

[Grimm]

That is a good one but I like the one that got in first because it's about dying to a mermaid.

[galehar]

I made the file read only (was actually surprised that I could do it).
I'm migrating its data to transifex. Please, post new submissions there. Thanks.

[galehar]

I've picked all the content of the item tabs which were reviewed, imported it into transifex and then most of it into trunk. I'll import the rest later.

[galehar]

I've finished merging items in transifex and trunk. I only left out plate armour because the new one seems worse than the existing one. I also added all the reviewed quotes for monsters and items. There are not in trunk yet, because I have a little issue for merging them. There are 2 I didn't put in reviewed status. Giant spiked club has japanese characters which aren't supported yet, and glaive has a weird character. It's probably fine, but I'm not sure what it is. Is it intentional (old english?) or a bug?

Anything left to be worthy of importing in the spreadsheet?

edit: oh, I just realized. There are a few quotes for entries that already have one. Are they meant to replace the existing one or in addition?

club
long sword
hobgoblin
mermaid
pillar of salt
rakshasa
small skeleton

[nicolae]

edit: oh, I just realized. There are a few quotes for entries that already have one. Are they meant to replace the existing one or in addition?

club
long sword
hobgoblin
mermaid
pillar of salt
rakshasa
small skeleton

I think they're probably intended as a replacement. The new "club" quote, for instance, is more fleshed out than the existing one, for instance, and I think the long sword quote was used for many kinds of blade.

Edit: What's the easiest way to get started using Transifex for item descriptions and such? The spreadsheet was painful but at least I knew how it worked.

[galehar]

Edit: What's the easiest way to get started using Transifex for item descriptions and such? The spreadsheet was painful but at least I knew how it worked.

Go to transifex, create an account, subscribe to the project, join the english team, click on a resource, click "translate now" and enter new descriptions/quotes. Activate "verbose edit" to see the key names.
Now that the workflow is almost finished, I'll take the time to write some documentation, promised! But it's really quite simple if you just edit them online.

[Grimm]

Giant spiked club has japanese characters which aren't supported yet, and glaive has a weird character. It's probably fine, but I'm not sure what it is. Is it intentional (old english?) or a bug?

The Japanese characters can be left out of the GSC quote - they're not essential.

The character in the glaive quote is an old character. Here is a useable version without the character:

  Code:

To know the perfect length of your short staffe, or half Pike, Forest bil, Partisan, or Gleue (glaive), or such like weapons of vantage and perfect lengths, you shall stand upright, holding the staffe upright close by your body, with your left hand, reaching with your right hand your staffe as high as you can, and then allow to that length a space to set both your hands, when you come to fight, wherein you may conveniently strike, thrust, and ward, & that is the just length to be made according to your stature. And this note, that these lengths will commonly fall out to be eight or nine foot long, and will fit, although not just, the statures of all men without any hindrance at all unto them in their fight, because in any weapon wherein the hands may be removed, and at liberty, to make the weapon longer of shorter in fight at his pleasure, a foot of the staff being behind the backmost hand does no harm.
 -George Silver, _Paradoxes of Defence_, 1599.

Anything left to be worthy of importing in the spreadsheet?

The new descriptions and quotes on the uniques tab of the spreadsheet don't seem to be in monsters.txt or quotes.txt respectively.

edit: oh, I just realized. There are a few quotes for entries that already have one. Are they meant to replace the existing one or in addition?

club
long sword
hobgoblin
mermaid
pillar of salt
rakshasa
small skeleton

Nicolae is correct, these are meant as replacements for the existing quotes.

[nicolae]

The English one is the one we're working on, and for that we just copy from the English (Australian) source when there's already a description/quote, and make up new ones when there isn't. Am I right?

[Grimm]

All the ones in Australian should already be in the English one. The idea is that "Australian" is a separate language and we "translate" it to new or corrected versions in the "English" language.

[galehar]

The English one is the one we're working on, and for that we just copy from the English (Australian) source when there's already a description/quote, and make up new ones when there isn't. Am I right?

No, don't copy from English (Australian) to English. Only put in English new and improved stuff. Once they are in trunk, the source files are updated with the new content, so "English (Australian)" will become like English. But the fact that there is an English entry means that it has been improved already and we can focus on other entries. It can still be edited and improved further of course.

[galehar]

OK, I updated transifex and trunk with the unique descriptions and quotes. The only one I didn't take is Mara. I think some devs (and former dev dpeg) are big fans of the Lord of Light book, so I'm not sure about changing this quote.

In other news: Documentation!

[Grimm]

galehar you're some kind of stone genius.

Re: the Mara quote, I agree but request that the new quote be added to the extant one, because the new one is nice and threatening.


I've edited the first post in this thread to reflect the move to Transifex.

[Grimm]

All quotation marks in quotes are showing up as Spanish (inverted) question marks in trunk.

[galehar]

All quotation marks in quotes are showing up as Spanish (inverted) question marks in trunk.

It's because tiles doesn't support unicode yet (try greek). There's already a partial implementation that has been done, so it should be fixed soon.
It works fine in console and webtiles.

[Grimm]

I think you mentioned that already and I forgot.

[galehar]

Zot traps don't have a description. Submissions welcome. Right here for now, transifex doesn't support adding missing desc (but it will).

[nicolae]

Are there plans to move the quotes to a separate screen, and not on the main description page? Or, at least, could it be an option? In tiles, when I mouseover an object, it displays its description in the message window at the bottom of the screen, but with the addition of the quotes, the information I usually look for (what base AC/speed/damage on armour and weapons is, because I can never remember) has been pushed below the window.

It's a dumb minor thing but if it's not a huge hassle it might be nice.

[Grimm]

That is on the drawing board, yes, I remember it being mentioned here months ago. Some quotes have already been moved. However I don't think it's high on the priority list.

[Grimm]

Zot traps don't have a description. Submissions welcome. Right here for now, transifex doesn't support adding missing desc (but it will).

Zot trap description:

A shimmering iridescent disc embedded in the floor. The surface is almost mirrorlike - is that your face, or a skull? The disc flashes, crackles and susurrates with intense and potent wickedness.

Two trap quotes, either for Zot or for all traps.

Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found,
Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep,
Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap
Upon my spirit’s stage.
-Sidney Lanier, "The Harlequin of Dreams". 1878.

The ogre, Life, comes into the room,
(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,
And stare with his burning eyes at you,
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,
Running up and down in the trap,
Until your misery bores him.
-Edgar Lee Masters, "Robert Fulton Tanner", _Spoon River Anthology_. 1916.

[Grimm]

Oh god please, leave the poor plants alone. Do you really suggest renaming them to something nobody has ever heard of, just because there are a bunch of African plants that look kind of like the horrible plant tile? It's a plant. They're not all identical, they just have the same tile.

Not anymore:



I re-propose giving various realworld names to plants.

[Galefury]

I re-propose not doing that. They are all the same "monster" (and they should be!), so they should have the same name.

Edit: also, <3 new plant tiles.

[BlackSheep]

Having a variety of text descriptions serves the same purpose as having a variety of tiles-- enhancing the user experience.

[Grimm]

That's my feeling. I definitely want to give different descriptions to the floor tiles in different branches.

[Confidence Interval]

(Not sure if this is the right place to post this but it's not really a bug - please tell me where to redirect this if it's inappropriate for this thread.)

Gretell says:
"merfolk impaler (m)
A powerfully muscled merfolk warrior, bearing a great trident."
- but the one I just encountered was carrying, and dropped, a scimitar, and the tile also showed a scimitar. It might be worth amending the text.

[Grimm]

(Not sure if this is the right place to post this but it's not really a bug - please tell me where to redirect this if it's inappropriate for this thread.)

Gretell says:
"merfolk impaler (m)
A powerfully muscled merfolk warrior, bearing a great trident."
- but the one I just encountered was carrying, and dropped, a scimitar, and the tile also showed a scimitar. It might be worth amending the text.

I've changed it to "A powerfully muscled merfolk warrior, bearing a deadly weapon." on Transifex.

[Xoai]

So, I noticed wizard hat was lacking a quote... I have a good one, but it might be too contemporary...

  Code:

“Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.”

from Night Watch, Terry Pratchett


guidance?

Edit:
was looking for a good Mennas quote and found somthing cool from EAPoe... though, it doesn't mesh well with mennas' priestlyness... but very dungeon relevant:

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.

-Edgar Allan Poe, _The Black Cat_. 1843.

[Jabberwocky]

I think it's an excellent quote, however I think that the idea is to have older quotes.

[Grimm]

The Pratchett one is pretty good. We don't need to be inflexible about the rules.

The Poe one, though colourful, is not suitable. Mennas is an angel, not a fiend, and he creates silence, so the description of the loud cry is wildly inappropriate.

[Xoai]

yeah, I was just thinking it would work well for something... maybe an ancient lich, or the tomb entrance. Poe has a lot of great stuff that fits the atmosphere of crawl quite nicely.

Just checked the spreadsheet... lich and tomb are finished already... how about the kiku altar?
or better yet, how about Boris?

should I just add this stuff and mark it blue on the spreadsheet? I'm new to the community, so I don't want to go around imposing on anyone/thing... But I am eager to help out!

[Grimm]

The spreadsheet is defunct. Quotes are added on Transifex now. You'll need to register for that.

Isn't there some demon that shouts a lot?