Friday, April 15
Sudden change and I'm back
So all of a sudden last fall, things changed. I got involved with ISFiT, and my life pretty much revolved around that until the end of February. Back now... Gnome3 post coming within 24 hours...
Sunday, August 22
Planning for promotion!
One of the most important ways to get people to think about alternative ways of working with their computer, is to promote open source software and operating systems. So that is what I am planning to do on the 7th of September. Originally I thought that I would limit it to a presentation of Ubuntu, and trying to get people to start using that instead of XP et al, but I decided against it.
So I got a presentation half done, and that should be no problem. I have a list of software that I want to start with, but that needs to be expanded to cover more types and platforms. Seeing as I have had some practical experience with public speaking, that should not be a problem. Actively working within political and other types of organisations has helped within giving a reasonable presentation on most subjects. To contribute back I also want to upload some of the material that I've used so it can be available to others.
The response among some of the people I know has been ok, not that many are immediately interested in this when you send them a little invite over the internet. When you talk to them it is better, and this coming week I'll do some information to people I do not know, which may get some people interested, but the final number is a bit uncertain at the moment.
The decision to do a presentation of free and open source software was made mainly due to the audience that I want to focus on, people who are normal users and who therefore need things that will be immediately useful. I have a list of some software that I want to present, which revolve around writing and communication, which are the main activities of any student. This is also the reason I want to present Ubuntu, because it is excellent at those two things and some students are in bad need of having their OS upgraded.
So I got a presentation half done, and that should be no problem. I have a list of software that I want to start with, but that needs to be expanded to cover more types and platforms. Seeing as I have had some practical experience with public speaking, that should not be a problem. Actively working within political and other types of organisations has helped within giving a reasonable presentation on most subjects. To contribute back I also want to upload some of the material that I've used so it can be available to others.
Now the challenge I face is of course finding software for the Windows and OS X platforms as well. I have some experience with Windows, but OS X have worked with at most 30 seconds. So this is really a call for some input, so I can get info on the good and free software for any platform. Do you have a suggestion of software that normal users would like to use? or suggestion of software that can be found on all platforms (not necessarily crossplatfrom)?
Tuesday, August 3
Woes of the Launchpad Translator
So this is a repost from a comment I left on a bug, which is not really a bug, that I filed in Launchpad concerning translation and localisation paper cuts (See bug #611420 reported to Ubuntu Translation). The problem is that there no good ways for translators to get feedback on translations that are completed, but that does not necessarily work that well. This is a usability issue that should be under the Paper Cuts framework but not necessarily the main OneHundredPaperCuts-Project. So here is a reply to David Planella, because he requested more information, read and comment as you wish.
I've been thinking some more about this, and I would describe the problem as such:
1) Say that my friend has installed Ubuntu 10.04 on his PC, and he doesn't feel that sturdy in English, so he wants to use it in Norwegian. Now, ignoring the fact that the Norwegian translation for Lucid is not complete, what does my friend do if he encounters sentences that makes no sense to him or he finds wording that is inconsistent within or across applications? The point being there is no good way of reporting these kind of bugs, errors and inconsistencies, but solving them is essential to the end user experience of the Ubuntu OS, or any other linux distro for that matter. So this is the problem.
These are the challenges:
2) These kind of problems could and probably fall under the Paper Cuts category, but these are very anglo-centric at the moment, meaning terminology inconsistencies etc are based on the English language version of Ubuntu. One could expand the Paper Cuts section to cover these problems, but would that make the current Paper Cuts project unmanagable? It seems that it will expand it to cover things that it was not originally intended to focus on, and would drown out other usability based bugs that are not tied to language.
3) Translation teams need to know about these types of problems, so they can look through the translated strings and change the translations that have bugs filed on them. This kind of feedback is important for translators, as it is not always easy work out what would be a good translation and if the string is translated, it is not always reviewed later as this takes away time from completing translations.
4) The possibility of reporting these kind of bugs is not easy enough, as you would have to log into launchpad and file a bug on the package or project that is affected by translation problems. I think this would be a stumbling block for many end users, and thus we lose out on essential feedback on Ubuntus usability.
5) Following on from this, it is not always relevant to notify the project that a translation isn't good, it is more relevant to file this to the translation team of your language. It is they who can correct the mistake, not the developers, so it is they the bug should be addressed to. The project or package should also be notified, but should not be responsible.
Proposed ways of solving it:
I) Make it easier to file these kind of bugs, with for example a "report language bug" option, that does not require a full registration. The steps could for example be: Go to "System" > "File Language Bug", promting a GUI that asks for (a) Language to file the bug to, (b) What software/package is affected, (c) what sentence or wording was problematic and where did it pop up and (d) email for followup; swish and it is sent off to notify the translation team on launchpad.
II) This relies on a structure within Launchpad similar to the Paper Cuts section, and that has to be in place first, this could also facilitate some discussion among translators, if they find poor translations that they don't know how to translate properly.
III) The point of solving this is also to push as many translations up to 90%+ on number of strings translated, and these being good translations.
I hope this has been informative as to what I consider to be the problem, and if this is one that we could want to be solved withing the Launchpad framework. Please comment on this and if you have any other views on how this could be solved.
I've been thinking some more about this, and I would describe the problem as such:
1) Say that my friend has installed Ubuntu 10.04 on his PC, and he doesn't feel that sturdy in English, so he wants to use it in Norwegian. Now, ignoring the fact that the Norwegian translation for Lucid is not complete, what does my friend do if he encounters sentences that makes no sense to him or he finds wording that is inconsistent within or across applications? The point being there is no good way of reporting these kind of bugs, errors and inconsistencies, but solving them is essential to the end user experience of the Ubuntu OS, or any other linux distro for that matter. So this is the problem.
These are the challenges:
2) These kind of problems could and probably fall under the Paper Cuts category, but these are very anglo-centric at the moment, meaning terminology inconsistencies etc are based on the English language version of Ubuntu. One could expand the Paper Cuts section to cover these problems, but would that make the current Paper Cuts project unmanagable? It seems that it will expand it to cover things that it was not originally intended to focus on, and would drown out other usability based bugs that are not tied to language.
3) Translation teams need to know about these types of problems, so they can look through the translated strings and change the translations that have bugs filed on them. This kind of feedback is important for translators, as it is not always easy work out what would be a good translation and if the string is translated, it is not always reviewed later as this takes away time from completing translations.
4) The possibility of reporting these kind of bugs is not easy enough, as you would have to log into launchpad and file a bug on the package or project that is affected by translation problems. I think this would be a stumbling block for many end users, and thus we lose out on essential feedback on Ubuntus usability.
5) Following on from this, it is not always relevant to notify the project that a translation isn't good, it is more relevant to file this to the translation team of your language. It is they who can correct the mistake, not the developers, so it is they the bug should be addressed to. The project or package should also be notified, but should not be responsible.
Proposed ways of solving it:
I) Make it easier to file these kind of bugs, with for example a "report language bug" option, that does not require a full registration. The steps could for example be: Go to "System" > "File Language Bug", promting a GUI that asks for (a) Language to file the bug to, (b) What software/package is affected, (c) what sentence or wording was problematic and where did it pop up and (d) email for followup; swish and it is sent off to notify the translation team on launchpad.
II) This relies on a structure within Launchpad similar to the Paper Cuts section, and that has to be in place first, this could also facilitate some discussion among translators, if they find poor translations that they don't know how to translate properly.
III) The point of solving this is also to push as many translations up to 90%+ on number of strings translated, and these being good translations.
I hope this has been informative as to what I consider to be the problem, and if this is one that we could want to be solved withing the Launchpad framework. Please comment on this and if you have any other views on how this could be solved.
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