[BUG] Fomula SYD description

l10n
#1

What a great example of a convoluted expression -
            which keeps us, the laymen, from completely understanding this
world of electronics :wink:

       'arithmetically declining' ???
            could be referring to that 'new math', huh :wink:

       To simplify matters -
            [yes, the Keep It Simple S method :wink: ]

          how about changing 'Compute the amount of depreciation at a given
period of time using the Sum-of-the-Years'-Digits method.'
              to read, To compute depreciation, use the
Sum-of-the-Years'-Digits method.

#2

       What a great example of a convoluted expression -
            which keeps us, the laymen, from completely understanding this
world of electronics :wink:

Actually it has nothing to do with "electronics"; rather exchange and market.

Personally, I favor precise and hermetic language. People who need certain
information will understand; people who don't, they don't care.

          how about changing 'Compute the amount of depreciation at a given
period of time using the Sum-of-the-Years'-Digits method.'
              to read, To compute depreciation, use the
Sum-of-the-Years'-Digits method.

No, because it changes meaning of words.
Sum-of-the-Years'-Digits method is established algorithm in investment; it is
used by this function internally. You can't tell people to use this method,
because you will be telling them to look elsewhere while they are looking at
exactly good place (also, why should brief function description mention any
other function? There is place in help for that).

#3

Dana 20.7.2013. 18:31, Mirosław Zalewski je napisao:

        What a great example of a convoluted expression -
             which keeps us, the laymen, from completely understanding this
world of electronics :wink:

Actually it has nothing to do with "electronics"; rather exchange and market.

Personally, I favor precise and hermetic language. People who need certain
information will understand; people who don't, they don't care.

I'm also in favor of writing it in language which people who needs it will understand. But some descriptions are complicated without reason.

Best regards,
Mihovil

#4

Might be the English descriptions for Calc functions were initially translated, at least partially, from German.

-Yury

Dana 20.7.2013. 18:31, Mirosław Zalewski je

...

#5

That's elitism and is wrong, really wrong.

Precision doesn't mean it has to be hermetic. People how know, don't need help. Don't you find contradictory to write _help_ in hermetic language? I'm not Calc user, but sometimes I do use it - and help witch doesn't help is worthless.

Bunch of (techno)babble is hard to translete (even impossible sometimes), and hermetic _help_ can't really help user who is not skilled in English. If you have something which is hard to translate and understand in original is something which no one can benefit from.

I know you didn't meant anything wrong, it's just a concern from part time Calc user.

Sincerely,

Krunoslav

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
I have encouraged a few native-English speakers to join this list with the aim of
1.  translating from geek or
2.  smoothing out clunky English phrases that look like translations from other languages

However, since they joined there have been no further requests for individual strings to be re-done in English.  We had 'loads' of emails for a month or 2 but then suddenly nothing.  Is there somewhere we could look through all the strings that get translated?

Sadly i didn't manage to get many people to join this time and those that did do not have a high level of technical skill with the sorts of systems you find easy.  I was hoping that more of the confusing strings would appear in the mailing list and that the technical side would be handled by the rest of you.  Still, point us in the right direction and be gentle with us and then we/they might be able to help.

Btw i wasn't clear what was meant by "hermetic" so i looked it up (even though context made it clear what the person meant by it) and got this from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic
No language is truly hermetic.  Even pure maths can be ambiguous.  It's part of the reason we need programming languages and things such as wiki-mark-up to communicate with machines.  However, even they have moments of confusion or imprecision.  We all just try to do a reasonably good job, in the time available, to make it easier for normal humans to read and we hope that the people following after us are able to improve on it if they need to. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

Yes, no and no.

First thing: by "hermetic" I mean "understood by people with some preliminary
knowledge about certain subject".

Precise language does not have to be hermetic, agreed. But being hermetic is
often the most efficient way to precisely communicate what you mean. Moreover,
it is generally safe to use, because it is highly unlikely that someone
without presumed knowledge will even look there.

Example. When you write statistical software, you don't explain in help what
"median" is, or how "chi-square test" is computed and how it could be used.
You expect your users to know that. The reason is simple: someone without that
knowledge wouldn't even bother to install statistical package.

It is the same case with SYD function. It is fine that it's description is not
understood by general audience, because general audience has no knowledge
about investments. In turn, general audience has no use of this function. Any
effort put into lowering entry barrier of usage of this function (e.g. by
explaining what "amount of depreciation" is) would be wasted anyway.

It all boils down to defining your target audience and purpose of help.

I, for one, think that "help" is supposed to help you in using this particular
implementation, not teach you general concept.

People who do understand general concept still need help. Let's take QUARTILE
function as example. If you know what quartile is, you still need help to tell
you what arguments can be passed to function, in what order and what are
acceptable values of them.

In fact, this is a way that most of Calc help has been written. Take a look at
ACOS help description. It will be useless if you don't know what
trigonometric, cosine and radians are.
But then, what possible use could you make of ACOS function if you don't know
what trigonometric is?

This is by no way "elitism". There are bunch of sources that can teach you
about general concept, like Wikipedia, online courses, schools, universities,
bookstores and libraries. There is no need for Calc help to duplicate that
effort.

To sum up:
- Being hermetic is fine.
- Help for particular function should be understood by people who need it. We
can safely assume they do have some preliminary knowledge.
- If help is not understood by specialists, then there is a problem.

I'm fine with anyone taking different course and making Calc help a teaching
resource. But that persone should prepare for a awful lot of work.

#8

But what about providing some clues in the help for those who know what they want but are unacquainted with the developing system in the first place? Your approach leaves too high entry threshold.

Continuing with the Calc functions, I might know what statistical distributions are but to find the concrete function I'd still turn to the search function, to which I'll feed a set of plain English words which I would expect to be in description.

-Yury

Precision doesn't mean it has to be hermetic. People how know, don't
need help. Don't you find contradictory to write _help_ in hermetic
language?

Yes, no and no.

First thing: by "hermetic" I mean "understood by people with some preliminary
knowledge about certain subject".

Precise language does not have to be hermetic, agreed. But being hermetic is
often the most efficient way to precisely communicate what you mean. Moreover,
it is generally safe to use, because it is highly unlikely that someone
without presumed knowledge will even look there.

...

#9

Well, I gave you few. :slight_smile:
To find more I would have to proof read all calc formulas and I'm not really sure I want to do that.

I see a lot of errors of cosmetical type in Calc, which I'm notreporting. Things like consistency.In some formulas you have nper/ npery / NPER / NPERY , some strings start with capital letter others don't. Some strings end with dot, others don't. I'm not reporting that since it isn't affectingfunctionality of program and I would spam this list all day long. :slight_smile:

Maybe someone can tackle that in his free time if he things it's worth fixing, but except cosmetical value nothing will be gained.

Dana 21.7.2013. 12:08, Tom Davies je napisao: