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Open Source Software Serves Niche Markets
mahendra writes "News.com is carrying an article about localisation of OpenOffice.org.
'So, what's new about that?', you may ask. The article talks about the potential markets that proprietary software markets are ignoring. By the time they realize the potential, Open Source software will have made deep inroads into these markets..."
Localization of software is one of the easiest things to do *IF* your software is set up properly.
Coming from Canada, where everything is in French as well as in English, I learned very early on (like day dot,) that you had to set up your software without any strings in it.
By using only symbolic references and setting up a dictionary of text strings or icon references you can refer to any 'local' attribute without having to muck with the code.
By switching the dictionary you can then switch the language that your users see without any performence hits and without any code changes.
Furthermore, by laying out the text in ''plages'' and letting the dictionary fill in the details, you achieve a much simpler screen and.or prport layout.
Debugging is easier too since you refer to the symbols you used for programming instead of whatever your users refer to (as this changes almost from user to user.)
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They do this by making those that are interested fund the development. For example the Linguistics Institute of Ireland worked on the Irish Gaelic spell checker. The Welsh work was undertaken by the University of Wales and the Welsh Language Board.
It will be.Just ask those guys:
-Tim Morley (timsk@openoffice.org)
-Joey Stanford (k0fcc@openoffice.org)
They are "Revising Glossary & Translating Files"
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
Try opening a passworded excel file with OOo. Or an excel file with a protected cell...Mine wouldn't do it, and from what I understand it never will, for some reason (clarification anybody?)
Very annoying, as I was trying to find out what mark I got for a module last term, and the lecturer distributed the marks in an excel file, which had a protected cell in it.
I ended up having to go into uni to check my mark, bah!
As for Classical Greek, it may have escaped your notice that it has developed into modern Greek. I guess a different typeface might well fix it (capitals only and the sigma is different.)Actually, the Omega (not the Sigma) is usually written differently. Classical texts have been written in minuscles for several centuries, so you'd also need them for ancient Greek. And you'd need even more than in modern Greek: where modern Greek's demotiki has one accent, ancient Greek (and the church's ye-olde form katharewousa) has three accents plus two spirits plus the iota subscriptum plus most combinations of the former three.
Last time I checked, you can't arbitrarly define x and y data sets for multiple series for use in XY plots for the spreadsheet in OpenOffice. This is an issue if you want to plot data such as multiple financial time series plots.
Looks at his copy of OpenOffice...
Exel Solver: OpenOffice Goal Seek (we have matlab already)
PowerPoint Pack-n-Go: OpenOffice export including Flash export.
Clippy: OpenOffice help (without stupid paper clip)
Hows that?
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Well, the new MS Office I've seen on XP machines handles styles beautifully. If you get a file that's been set up by a neophyte (i.e. without styles), opening the "Style" manager gets you a list of all the different varieties of formatting that exist in the document -- allowing you to effectively act as if there were styles there all along (the only thing it can't handle nicely is a situation in which the person has put a Tab character at the start of every paragraph; but in that case, you can at least easily do a find and replace on the tab character).
Now don't get me wrong, you're talking to a devoted OO user (for MS documents, at least; for home grown documents, I prefer LyX). But the ability to stylify a document you've gotten from a neophyte is wonderful. I would actually like something even better, so that you could automatically sense that a user had put an extra newline between all paragraphs and a tab character and treat this as a style in itself, since what the user intends is to say put a 12pt space above each paragraph and indent the first line (as a teacher, I get this kind of redundant paragraph formatting from students conditioned to lengthen papers, even though I give word limits instead of page limits to avoid this sort of fiddling). Of course, once we get a great automagic style manager in OO, it won't be so hard for me to add an extra feature like this myself.
Wouldn't dream of it. Octave all the way.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Because it is not just strings. Most software also shows values such as "There are 5 objects". The 5 is a value derived in some fashion by the application. In C this would be:
sprintf(buf,"There are %d objects",amount);
The trouble is that the placement of the %d is very language dependant. So the localized version of the above would be something like:
buf = get_lang(OBJECT_COUNT_TEXT, amount);
Where get_lang needs to locate the language, then fill in the "amount". The usualy language file would have (for English):
OBJECT_COUNT_TEXT = There are {0,number} objects
but in another language might look like
OBJECT_COUNT_TEXT = %1234%4342%5663%3334 {0,number} %34343
Where the %xxxx are unicode characters
Where {0,number} is a code telling the localization utility that the first parameter is a number and goes here. Remember that formatting of numbers is also language dependant where 1,234 might be shown as Finally some code simply "strings" text together:
cout << "There are " << ref->amount << "objects"
Also more complex localization will take into acount grammer such as:
There is 1 object
There are 2 objects
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Goal Seek != Solver
Main difference: Solver constraints. Goal Seek can target whatever value it feels like, but if I need my variables to be "binary" or "integer" or "less than 5" Goal Seek doesn't cut it.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Except Excel is notoriously unreliable for statistics, and MicroSoft seems to be uninterested in fixing the known (for years) problems with distributions, linear regression, etc.
this has an overview and citations.
If you need particular kinds of stats, a tweaked Rweb server might be one option - set it up to run "canned" analyses on user data. You'd have to have a web server available, obviously, plus enough knowledge of R/Splus to set up the analyses necessary.
I have something very much like this set up with a database interface to allow my collaborators to run canned analyses (or any, if they know the R needed) on the most current data.
Okay... having gotten way afield from where I meant to go... be very, very careful using Excel for any kind of stats!
I prefer to be called Evil Scientist.
The only "features" that are somewhat missing, is a nice looking interface under MS Windows (see below), and a ton of pre-created images, templates, web sites, etc. (not that anyone ever uses these anyways.
Something to consider though are the features OpenOffice.org has that MS Office doesn't. Such as, licensing issues, ability to create documents using the stylist (awesome feature), and IMHO once you learn to use OOo, it is actually easier to use than at least MS Office 2K (I never had the need to get Office XP)
As for the nice looking interface issue, Ximian has created an awesome looking theme for OpenOffice.org, and I happened to create a theme based on these icons for Windows users. Check it out at my website
There are a few issues with themeing currently, such as not being able to use png files, etc. But these issues are being worked on.
I am also starting to create some content for Draw that I will donate back to the project so it can be used instead of MS Visio.
All in all the future looks very bright for OpenOffice.org !!
scripsit Bananenrepublik:
FWIW, the Katharevousa is not the form used in liturgy, but the `purified' version created by the nationalists in the modern revolutionary period. (When my father went to school, they still taught Katharevousa, and that's what all the newspapers etc. were written in.) It is, if you will, the old form of Modern Greek. The Demotiki is the normal spoken and written form today.
The Church uses more-or-less Biblical Greek, which, I guess you could say, is intermediate between Classical and Katharevousa.
In principio creauit Linus Linucem.