our needs & EDUML v0.4 & Language Support

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Doug Loss wrote:

>If the second, both Roman Suzi and Hilaire Fernandes will probably be
>interested in hearing from you.

My  progie  is  vapourware  at  the  moment.  I  have  slightly
miscalculated my time-budget and recall some other duties so my
QZB is on hold: ideas are in the process of transforming to the
means of achieving goals. (oh!)

It also occured to me  that  I  don't  know  how  to  make  the
Perl/Perl/Tk program internalisable!

(Especially when it comes  to  translations  into  hierogliphic
languages like chinese or japanese...)

Summary:

I hope, everybody here agree on this:
------------------------------------

- hidden (from end-user) things in English
- user parts in native (or near that) language

Don't  be  afraid,  English  is  scientific/technical  language
nowadays - like Latin used to be centuries ago. And I must  say
- it is good at that: more  compact,  resembles  latin  and  is
ASCII complaint, without any problems, hehe. Lets  say,  its  a
common denominator (I don't want to offend  brittish/americans/
australians by saying it!)

However, I had an impression that there are people reading this
list who want to do something to near our goals but aren't sure
how they can help.

May developers here can anounce what  kind  of  non-programming
'jobs' are available?

So far I counted these categories:

- technical writing
- translations
- graphical design
- testing as end-user in real schools
- public-relations ;-)
- Internet-hosting (this is what seul.edu is doing)
- Internet data-mining (to find any/good edu programs for UNIX/Linux)
- finding-more-free-eduware-authors-to-tell-them-to-port-their-programs-to-Linux

And for those skilled in programming:

- Gtk/X/... UI programming
- XML/DB programming
- textmode UI programming
- C, Perl and Python programming
- project management

There are these projects under different stage of development
(sorted by release-readiness)

- Dr Geo            - needs: ported to Gtk UI + translations 
                             + methodological material
- GradeBook - needs: .......................................................
- EDUML for all kinds of administration data - needs: ......................
- QZB (QuiZBrowser) - needs: to go beyond definitions

Have I missed anything?

(Today was a holyday, so I dared to  spend  more  time  than  I
should for writing into this list, so I'll  better  write  less
English and more Perl in the future ;-) So, I shut up.

And sorry for my English!

Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi

 -- Petrozavodsk -- Karelia -- Russia --
    -- powered by Linux RedHat 5.1 --

P.S. I wrote more than that above. But then thought it will not
be interesting. For  those,  who  need  more  argumentation  or
cultural insight, look here:


As   for   the   previous   comment   about    english    being
computer-oriented language, the mentioned Microsoft  knows  the
key of success: they have national versions of their programs!

From Windows to Office things are in Russian in russian version
of windows.

And people buy it! And not WordPerfect or StarOffice!

That  is  why  we  need  translations  and  i18n  if  we   want
educational products to be accepted and Linux  to  be  accepted
not only in Britain/USA/Australia...

Do you remember Linux kernel was started and still directed  by
a finn?

Still it will be laughable if we had
'asentaa'  instead  of  'mount'  or  '/asn/levyke'  instead  of
'/mnt/floppy'!

(BTW, finns have special word for  the  'computer':  tietokone,
and they are  very  picky  about  their  language  and  try  to
translate everything into it. For example, they call 'russians'

     " "   "
 'venalaisia'...)

My though is, that native language support is  very  important,
but certain things better remain in english! We  have  UNIX  at
hand and it will be disaster if we translate its commands  into
something else than english!

For example, I  don't  like  programs  in  russian  (my  native
language is russian), because sometimes its hard to  understand
what  this  or  that  action  means:  we  have  three  possible
translations  of  the  word  'Paste'  and  programs  are   very
inconsistant in the use of it!

So, all hidden things, which only developers or  IT-specialists
will see, MUST BE IN ENGLISH! (Thanks God, Americans were  more
successive in computers than we are - the world could be  in  a
worse situation if it had a need to learn  cyrillic  characters
in order to use computers! Ask american  astronauts  who  learn
russian to understand russian space technology to work together
in Space.)

OTOH, everything end-user will see MUST BE in  native  language
or nearly native language!