Talk:CTF

Microsoft CTFs

Two of the list entries are:

Collaborative Translation Framework Loader, a Microsoft Windows process relating to the ctfmon.exe file

and

CTF, an undocumented Windows protocol involved with the Microsoft Text Services Framework

Microsoft does indeed have a "Collaboration Translation Framework" - see e.g

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/1ffd6664-2bd1-47e2-b711-460e1ced6c0e/using-microsoft-translator-hub-and-the-collaborative-translation-framework-a-tutorial?forum=translatorhub

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-crowdsourcing-post-editing-with-the-collaborative-translation-framework/

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/machine-translation-of-microsoft-support-pages-f8530315-4387-cb5a-f6ef-0a57e4a3dbca

which, acccording to the above, "provides users with the ability to correct machine translated articles", and was used in research into crowdsourcing translation improvements..

But it is not clear that this is the CTF of the CTF Loader process/ctfmon.exe. That CTF is in fact the "undocumented Windows protocol involved with the Microsoft Text Services Framework".

There is a little information on that CTF at https://web.archive.org/web/20041019111448/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599 - note that it existed as far back as 2004, which IMO is long before any research into crowdsourced online translation would have resulted in a Windows component. https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/down-rabbit-hole.html discusses this CTF further, and from the description it is unlikely that they are the same thing (unless the collaborative translator functionality was added to the other CTF.)

I was unable to find out what "CTF" stood for in the Text Services Framework context. In the Project Zero blog post mentioned above, Tavis Ormandy states "I can't figure out what CTF stands for, it's not explained in any header files, documentation, resources, sdk samples, strings or symbol names. My best guess is it's from hungarian notation, i.e. CTextFramework."

AstridRedfern (talk) 16:34, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. So far it's sounding like we don't have anything on Wikipedia covering the "Collaboration Translation Framework" topic and we should remove that entry for the time being. Do you agree? -- Fyrael (talk) 15:00, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Firstly, I should have put "Collaborative Translation Framework" in my above post, instead of "Collaboration Translation Framework" - my apologies for the typo.

Secondly, I think that entry should stay up. There are some sites on the Net which confuse the two CTFs and treat the "Collaborative Translation Framework" as though it's the CTF of CTFmon.exe. There isn't much information on that latter CTF, and it's very easy for users to be misled into thinking they are the same. Having both entries on the disambiguation page would help to counter this misinformation.

I've looked at this page's edit history, and it originally just had the one entry (for the CTF of ctfmon.exe) as you propose, including a brief description. In later, good-faith edits, the description was deleted and the words "Collaborative Translation Framework" were added to that entry. We run the risk of subsequent edits of this sort muddying the water again if we delete the "Collaborative Translation Framework" entry.

Thirdly, I've found a section of the Microsoft Translator article that briefly covers it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Translator#Collaborative_Translation_Framework_(CTF) - I suggest editing to link to that. AstridRedfern (talk) 13:48, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I've made the edit I mentioned above. Let me know if there are any problems with it. AstridRedfern (talk) 13:52, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I had to edit the link in one of my previous posts, as it was invalidated when correcting a recurring typo on the Microsoft Translator page. Should be good again now. AstridRedfern (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)