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.