Multilanguage Search

This website uses Content-Negotiation to present the articles in english or german, depending on the users preferences in her browser. Sadly, search engines like Google only index the english content and thereby reduce the quality of the search results, since searching for german words do not result in hits here. Here a comparison of a search for the beginning of Arthur’s last article in german and english. Exceedingly cynical is the “Translate this page [into german]” link on the german version of the (still english) search results. Others have already found this problem. Charl van Niekerk describes it in September 2005(!) in this article. Apparently nothing has changed since then. I will have to include the langage in the URL, so Google understands the difference too. Very annoying. Yahoo has the same troubles. Update (2008-01-30): Meanwhile the german searches do not find anything anymore… Update (2010-01-25): I’ve upgraded the wordpress to 2.9.1 and installed the qTranslate plugin, which provides the translated articles also via links. Google should now start picking up the german versions again.

>> Reference project: Implementing WordPress-based Website

Based on the reference design provided by Sabine herself, we implemented the zartbitter Website. The site is powered by the PHP-based WordPress blog and CMS engine, some additional plugins and a bit of yarn to hold it all together.

>> Setting a permanent search_path, the Right Way

Others recommend setting the search_path in the postgresql.conf. Current versions of PostgreSQL can set the search_path permanently on a per-database basis without having to touch system configuration files

>> Porting Puppet to Windows

In the course of the PuppetCamp Europe, I met with many people I only knew from IRC and email and it was a great time with interesting and inspiring discussions.

Today I want to write about the work I’m currently commisioned for by puppetlabs, porting puppet to Microsoft Windows.

>> Puppetcamp Europe 2010

I’m going to Puppetcamp Europe 2010!

>> Using gendarme with Code Contracts from .NET 4.0

When using gendarme on post-processed assemblies with code contracts and /throwonfailure set, a few things have to be ignored. Put the following lines into your ignore file (for example gendarmeignore.txt) and use it with –ignore on the command line.

>> Microsoft cannot decode Base64: News at 11!

Arthur has found a really nasty bug in Microsoft’s streaming Base64 decoder as used in the WCF: Connect Bug#541494

>> Kolab Connector binaries uploaded

Arthur moved on with programming and testing. Now we uploaded the first packages, which now contain the basic calendar and contacts synchronisation. The plugins already are able to synchronize our personal data.

>> Kolab Sync for Android and Outlook: Developer Preview

We are proud to announce the first developer preview for Kolab sync clients for both Android and Outlook. Both are licensed under the GPLv3.

>> Visual Studio 2008 Debugger

I didn’t know that: the VS2008 debugger has many bugs. Specifically, if you have a solution with multiple websites, debugging doesn’t work!

Symptom: Upon reaching a breakpoint, StepOver/Into do not work, but resume execution. This makes the debugger pretty pointless.

>> Building a simple MSBuild Task

On the “Using Studio’s “Custom Tool” in MSBuild” question, I was prompted to share the code. Here is a stripped down skeleton where I removed the actual calls to the custom tool. Since it is open source I didn’t really need to access the Visual Studio’s registry keys.