Shoutbox

Hi there,

For the past days i've been thinking about a way of helping the translators community by creating something even more useful than Choli's Messenger Plus! Translator ( which is an excellent app and has been helping me a lot, by the way! ). I quickly started coding and testing a multi-user text editor, which the one and only feature was that multiple users could edit the same file at the same time. I used Java for this little app, but i'm thinking about using ASP.net in the "real deal". I know that collaborative editors aren't something new, but that experience was essential, as it was the start point for the idea i have now.
As the thread subject suggests, i'm willing to create an Online translator, which main ideas ( for now ) would be:

• Multi-user supported, which would allow the team to have always the most recent version.
  
• Possibility to define what does each member has to translate. For instance, you could associate a specific color to each translator and his translating part would have his background color.
  
  
• The translation file would be stored in the server, and when you were ready to send the file to Patchou, the web app would zip the file for you and even send it to Patch if you want
  
• This web app would have a spell checker valid for ( most ) languages. Also, with the right dictionary files, it could be done so much more! A search for synonyms, a translator "on-the-fly" if you don't know a specific word or expression. Yes, these features would be more complicated to implement, but that could be done in the future versions.
  
• Integration of real screenshots of Messenger Plus! Live, so translators could see in real-time if what they translated fits or needs to be reduced. I'm not very sure about the best way to do this though, so I'm open to suggestions. I guess taking a screenshot of every single form could be done, but at each new version there would be a lot to change.
  
• Cross-compatible ( duh! )
  
• Code highlighting, in order to distinguish between keys, sections, values and comments.

And right now these are the ones I remember. Of course I'll only start this project if the translators and beta testers themselves think this would be something they would use. As a translator myself, I know how confusing is to have our ini file and the default one open in Textmate/Notepad++, and Messenger Plus! preferences, regedit and the almighty dictionary always open too. And of course, once again, i'm open to suggestions and criticism