Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Unicode CLDR Survey Tool Beta

March 21, 2012 — The Unicode CLDR Survey Tool is open for beta testing today. CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages, with the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data available. The survey tool is an online tool used by organizations and individuals to contribute data to this repository, and to vote on alternative contributions.



The survey tool has undergone substantial revision, with dramatic improvements in performance and usability. We would appreciate people trying out the tool so that we can identify any remaining problems before we start data submission (currently scheduled for April 4). For more information, see http://goo.gl/7M1IG.

Access

  1. Production Survey Tool. If you have an existing survey tool account, you can go to the production tool at Production Survey Tool.
  2. Smoke-Test Survey Tool. If you don’t have an account, you can still try out the survey tool using the Smoke Test version. It will create a test account automatically.


So that you can try out the tool as you wish, none of the data you enter during beta is saved.



The Smoke Test tool may be restarted at any time, because it used for development. If you get disconnected when this happens, then refresh your browser: all of your changes should be saved.

Guide

If you haven’t used the survey tool before, you may want to take a quick look at:

  1. http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/guide
  2. http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/walkthrough

This documentation should be updated in the next few days for some of the changes in UI.

How you can help

Visit and randomly vote and enter changes.
  1. Pick your favorite locale
  2. Visit different Sections of the locale (Code Lists, etc), and different pages in the Section.
    1. Vote for different choices (including Proposed, Others, Abstain)
    2. Change a value (Change column)
    3. Try zooming on different columns (clicking on the following cells)
      1. St (status, eg error/alert)
      2. Draft (the approval status)
      3. Voted (the voting status)
      4. Proposed / Others (particular values)
      5. (Clicking on Code shows some internals, not really user-focused item)
    4. Reset your Coverage Level (at the top). (This changes how many items show).
  1. Verify that data was accepted, or is rejected (appropriately) because of an error.
  2. Periodically, refresh the entire page you are on and verify that items previously added remain visible.
  3. Report any new issues at http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/newticket. (Skip those below). Please include the URL to the page where you found the error.

Known issues

Please read these over so you know what to skip:

  1. Use FireFox/Safari/Chrome, not IE 8 or other browsers.
  2. Some locales, such as English (en), are read-only.
  3. Do not post comments in the ‘forums’ or try “Show Coverage”
  4. Some generated examples use English instead of the local language, or the wrong currency.
  5. The information in the “Code” column will be simplified during the beta process; some rows will move to different sections or pages.
  6. There will be a bookmark on each row, for reference.
  7. Other items may be added to this list during the beta period

What changed?

  1. Page access is 10-30 times faster, depending on the operation.
  2. Items are submitted individually (with Return/Enter), instead of having to submit a whole page.
  3. Pages are not broken up into multiple subpages, simplifying navigation.
  4. Errors and Warnings appear when you submit an item.
  5. There is no “zoom” window; instead, zooming is in-place, with separate versions depending on what part of a row you click on.


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