Problems with a multiple-language installation

Software Support
1

First of all, thanks a lot to all developers for this wonderful program, which really solves a lot of problems with managing a journal that we had before.

I have installed OJS 3.3.0.7 with all the languages of our journal (German, English, Russian, Polish, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian; https://weltderslaven.de/), making German the primary language and running the interface in German, English, and Russian. This constellation seems to have brought up a few little bugs:

• When adding a user or a contributor e.g. while working in German, the program always complains that I have not filled out a compulsory field – until I enter the first name also in the English version field. (The last name field seems to be okay without an English version, though – which results in the person having only a first name but no last name in the English version if I do not remember to enter both versions.) The expected behavior would be that the program needs the name (and all other information) in only one language, tacitly assuming that it is identical in the other language versions unless something different is entered.

• Whenever I accidentally hit the TAB button after entering information in a field and thus unintentionally activate another language version of the input field, the program will tell me that this language version is also compulsory, although actually it is not.

• When I upload a file (e.g. the text of a contribution), I am compelled to enter a “meaningful description” of the file in all the seven languages I have installed (even the ones that are not used as interface languages). Copy-pasting the file name into all other language versions does the trick, but this should not be necessary, one file name should be enough.

• Automatic messages sent by the program, e.g. when I add a user and have the program tell them their initial password, seem to always be sent in the language that I am using when working on my end of the program. As this is usually German, a lot of users have asked back in English or some other language what the message they received meant. A better behavior of the program would be to exploit the information on the “working languages” of the user to determine which language to send the automated message in. (Of course, there would have to be a fallback solution, e.g. the principal language of the journal, in case no such information has been entered, but in a multilingual environment like mine I would take care to always enter the working language of the user if this information was used by the program.)

• This is not a bug, but for semi-automatic messages where I can modify the text of the message I always have to switch to the appropriate language to get the template in that language. If someone changes the behavior of the automatic messages, this point could also be improved by selecting a working language that I and the addressee have in common as the language of the template (giving priority to the language I am currently working in if we have several languages in common).

Thanks a lot for considering this!

2

When adding a user or a contributor e.g. while working in German, the program always complains that I have not filled out a compulsory field

Managing usernames in a multilingual journal is not as easy as we’d like. There has been some discussion about this and you can track progress in this issue in our development repository.

The last name field seems to be okay without an English version, though

OJS only requires a given name. Not all individuals have a family name. They may have a given/family name in one language but only a given name in another language.

Whenever I accidentally hit the TAB button after entering information in a field and thus unintentionally activate another language version of the input field, the program will tell me that this language version is also compulsory, although actually it is not.

Can you provide an example of a specific form and field where this occurs?

When I upload a file (e.g. the text of a contribution), I am compelled to enter a “meaningful description” of the file in all the seven languages I have installed (even the ones that are not used as interface languages).

I was not able to reproduce this. Can you be more specific about where this is occurring? I tried to reproduce this by uploading a file to a submission’s copyediting stage, selecting Data Set for its component type, and then entering a description on the next screen. In my tests, this was never required in any language.

Automatic messages sent by the program, e.g. when I add a user and have the program tell them their initial password, seem to always be sent in the language that I am using when working on my end of the program.

We’d like to make more use of the working language setting of the user. However, at the moment it is very unlikely that users have configured this setting. Until we can get more users adopting the setting, there is not much value in making use of it.

for semi-automatic messages where I can modify the text of the message I always have to switch to the appropriate language to get the template in that language.

We hope that this will be included in the email workflow planned for 3.4. You can follow progress in this issue.