Empty strings in AMOS

Empty strings in AMOS

by Ralf Krause -
Number of replies: 3
Picture of Language pack maintainers

Hi David,

is it possible to delete strings in AMOS?

I will show an example. While I'm translating in the language pack de_du I found that I could delete a string fron the pack. I do not need the string "Cookies müssen aktiviert sein!" (cookies must be enabled) because I made the string shorter and deleted "in Ihrem Browser" (in your browser). The reason for the different packs in german is that we translate "in Ihrem Browser" in de and "in deinem Browser in de_de.

If I take away the browser from the string I do not need the translation in de_du anymore. How can I delete it? If I make it empty then the string is still there and the string gets empty on th Moodle page?

I think that AMOS should delete empty strings from other language packs ... from all others than the english one.

Ralf 

In reply to Ralf Krause

Re: Empty strings in AMOS

by David Mudrák -
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Hi Ralf,

you are right. You can't delete strings at the moment via AMOS and your use case clearly shows it must be possible. But we already know that AMOS can't delete empty strings because there are situations when we explicitly want to translate something as an empty string.

What would be doable pretty quickly is a solution based on a special syntax of translated strings. I can imagine something like: if the translator puts a string like {{AMOS:EMPTY}} or {{AMOS:DELETE}} then the string would be marked as empty or deleted, respectively. Of course, this requires that we will never have a real string like that in Moodle but I believe the chances are really small.

As an alternative approach, there might be links like "Make empty" and "Delete" below each textarea. I was a bit worried that this would make the UI more complicated and screen space wasting for no good reason (as these cases are pretty rare). Although this could be solved by some small "+" icon next the right bottom corner of the textarea that, when pressed, would expanse an action menu with links like this.

What do other maintainers prefer? Would you mind using these special syntax "commands" or control widgets?

In reply to David Mudrák

Re: Empty strings in AMOS

by Ralf Krause -
Picture of Language pack maintainers

The widgets will be better and easier to use because nobody reads the manual for AMOS  smile

In reply to David Mudrák

Re: Empty strings in AMOS

by Séverin Terrier -

Hi,

Just an idea : perhaps it could also be possible that, when a string becomes empty (after editing), AMOS automatically asks the user if it must be saved empty, or deleted ?

This could avoid having more widgets, for these (rare) situations...

Séverin