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Two-column documents, one column for each language-- how do people make them? What’s the low-tech approach? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org to c/translator@sopuli.xyz

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I use LaTex to create 2-column documents, one column for each language. Works great for me, but I wonder what other people use.

I have a 2-column latex doc where one column is my mother tongue and the other column is a machine translation. I will need a collaborator to manually improve the machine translation. I cannot expect them to handle LaTeX. My code-heavy doc would be painful for someone who does not know latex. So I wonder what 2-column format and tools would normal people use.

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[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In LibreOffice a table is very low effort. You click the table icon, choose 2 as width and 1 as height and you're good to go. Takes about 2½ seconds.

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Right, but the effort is in the manual entry. I am starting with a document coded in LaTeX which produces a 2-column PDF. So using latex2rtf will be my attempt at an automatic conversion but I imagine it will be a disaster. So from there, alternatively, I have a lot of copying and pasting to do. A table does not feel right, but I guess the first thing I have to look into is whether a table can span many pages. If each page must have a separate table, then what happens as the table grows? I anticipate a lot of pain, but nonetheless I'll see what I can do.

Journals and newspapers commonly do multiple columns though not for different languages, so the right column is a continuation of the left. I suppose a table might be a hack around that, assuming L/O even supports 2 columns of text in the traditional sense in the first place.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I double-checked, and yes: A table can span an infinite amount of pages. That's also the reason I like to use a 2x1 table instead of two columns: The two columns are basically just one text flow that jumps back to the top of the page from the page's end if there's enough space to the right of that column. A 2x1 table is simply two separate flows of text separated by a line between them. Or a transparent "line", if you prefer not having a visible box around the table. (If you want to have the box, it has a horizontal line in the beginning and end of each page, which I find ugly.)

Tables work that way because word processors such as that of LibreOffice's or Microsoft Office's don't really internally have a consept of "page". They have a page break "character" that tells that "now a page ends". And, if you're printing a document and it doesn't fit on a page, the rest is continued from the top of the next paper when printing. They do show a "page" when writing a document, but internally, it's just a long flow of text and images and such, and the text gets thrown on whatever page it ends up on. This means that if you change the font size in a long text, text from the bottom of a page might move to the top of the next one, or vice versa.

May I ask you: You don't seem to use a GUI at all, and it seems like you have never seen a GUI. I only know one other person who lives like that, and they are 100% blind. Is that the case with you? If you are using Lemmy without a GUI, how?! I'd like them to be able to browse Lemmy!

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I double-checked, and yes: A table can span an infinite amount of pages.

That’s useful. It also just occurred to me that I probably want 1 table per paragraph anyway to keep the alignment. If my collaborator turns out not to be LaTeX-literate, I will try libreoffice w/tables.

May I ask you: You don’t seem to use a GUI at all, and it seems like you have never seen a GUI. I only know one other person who lives like that, and they are 100% blind. Is that the case with you? If you are using Lemmy without a GUI, how?! I’d like them to be able to browse Lemmy!

I am not blind. I just have a strong bias for TUIs, for scripting, control, and performance on old hardware (as I don’t do spy chips, which are post-2008 intel CPUs or post-2013 AMD CPUs). I created the !text_ui@lemmy.sdf.org community because of this preference.

I still today use a GUI browser for Lemmy. But I have investigated and there are options:

NeonModemOverdrive is a TUI app for Lemmy but at least for me it was too buggy to be useable.
Someone wrote an emacs app. I would like to install that but ATM it demands a newer version of emacs than I have.
The Links text browser (not to be confused with lynx) has some JavaScript support and it works with the Lemmy stock client. I don’t recall off the top of my head why I did not make regular use of that. It’s obviously a hack to get a TUI but the Lemmy UI was not designed for it so it’s not as fast in the ergonomical sense as we expect a well designed TUI to be. Perhaps it would be practical for your friend. OTOH, the emacs option is probably better.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I tried both the registering and the login with elinks, and it didn't work. I did try try NeonModemOverdrive, but for example the inability to start new conversations was quite a show-stopper. (what you can do, however, is to start a conversation using Mastodon with one account, then continue that conversation with NeonModemOverdrive, on another account. That's necessary because Mastodon is lacking some features in its Lemmy-support as well – some messages or parts of messages fail to show properly on it.

I now tried installing just the basic links from the Ubuntu repository instead of elinks – and the login doesn't work either on Sopuli or on lemmy.sdf.org . How have you managed to get that to work?

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Ah, right, I think I meant elinks. It has been a while, but I recall that JS support was essential. I first heard of it working for someone else which inspired me to try it. And it worked for me. I don’t recall the extent of my tests (it was a while ago). If reg and login are a problem, you could perhaps do those things with cURL or something and hand off the logged in cookie to elinks.

All hacks aside, emacs is likely the best option since the pkg was designed specifically for using Lemmy. But that’s speculative since i have not tried it.