#oneaday Day 439: The Right Tools

I think I've talked about this before, but I'm struggling for inspiration today so I'll talk about it… possibly again.

It always baffles me how companies can have proprietary tools and software built for them… and that said software is some of the hottest, stinkiest garbage you will ever find out there.

I've encountered this on numerous occasions. When I worked in the commercial games press, every CMS I used was a complete sack of crap, because for some reason most of these sites refuse to use an off-the-peg solution such as WordPress. Why? Fuck knows; there's really very little reason to use a bespoke solution these days, what with WordPress and its competitors being enormously expandable and customisable.

At my current day job, I encounter this on a daily basis. Without getting too much into the details, my work primarily consists of managing the localisation of various bits and pieces. I don't actually do the localisation myself; I do, however, get the content out of the place where it's supposed to be, send it off to the actual localisers, then put it back where it should be.

This should be a simple process, you would think. Export content -> send to localisers -> receive back from localisers -> import content.

Do you want to know what our actual process is?

Copy US content to UK field -> Manually correct US spellings -> Export content -> Manually copy HTML line by line into an Excel spreadsheet to compare variations on the content and see what we might be able to share -> Manually copy HTML line by line into a new XML file with completely proprietary tagging system to prepare for "localisation management" software -> Import to "localisation management" software -> Break something -> Fix it -> Copy content into web-based tool so it turns XML into HTML rendering that the preview in the "localisation management" software can actually display, since it doesn't have an appropriate XML interpreter -> Use Inspect Element to copy HTML output -> Copy HTML output into "HTML Beautifier" so it doesn't look like unreadable shit -> Copy HTML output from HTML Beautifier into preview field of localisation management software -> Find something wrong -> Correct XML -> Have to do the whole bloody process to generate the preview again -> Copy CSS from web-based preview tool -> Paste CSS into new "library" in the localisation management software -> Export all the shit I just imported in a completely different XML format to send to the localisers -> Receive back from localisers -> Import XML -> Correct the mistakes the localisers inevitably made with variable names etc -> Export content from localisation management software in some indecipherable format that generates 300 files across approximately 15MB even for the smallest page update -> Run indecipherable output through "File Transformer" to turn it back into the content format we originally exported approximately three weeks ago -> Import content back to main CMS

This is stupid. And yet it's one of those processes that is apparently so ingrained, so entrenched in the people who have been there longer than me that there doesn't appear to be an alternative; our boss gets super-pissy if we don't follow "the procedure", even if it's obviously a colossal waste of time, energy and motivation.

It drives me absolutely bonkers, because it's so obviously stupid, and yet people seem unwilling to acknowledge this. Why? Fuck knows. It's one of many reasons I feel I'd be much happier making a living from doing my own thing in my own way… but, well, in the meantime, I gotta pay the bills.