Post-evolution

[elzubeir at arabeyes dot org (Mohammed Elzubeir)]

Salam,

We have had authors of the following applications/libraries visit us on
IRC during our 'evolution party':

- ixterm
- Qt
- Pango
- kbabel
- gtranslator
- mlterm
- fribidi

As well as people involved in Wine Arabization from Freesoft.jo

What needs to be done next is to assign tasks to follow-up on some of
the conversations that we have all participated in (varying from one to
the other) with all the participants.

+ Wine/Freesoft
  - Need to contact Freesoft folks and setup a project page as well as
    get involved in the code.
  => Elzubeir, M.
  
+ Arabic spellchecking in OpenOffice/Abiword/etc 
  - Since OpenOffice and AbiWord Arabic support is for the most part
    available, this will only require active testing and bug-reporting.
  - Adding spellchecking capabilities using Duali is, however, necessary
    to make those word-processors/text editors more productive.
  => Elzubeir, M.

+ Emacs Arabic support
  - Someone kept coming on IRC (and posting on the lists) about the
    merge of emacs-bidi with the main tree. He noted being proficient in
    Elisp but not C.
  - He welcomed working with anyone able to take on the C aspect while
    he takes on the Elisp part.
  => Shaikli, N.

+ KBabel/Gtranslator
  - There are a few issues here and there with the translation tools
    that simply need a semi-permanent liaison from Arabeyes to follow-up
    on.
  => Medini, A.

+ Qt toolkit library
  - There are several issues discussed during the IRC session which
    require follow-up (Lars noted patches not likely to be accepted).
  => Rahal, Y.

+ Pango
  - There were also some issues discussed dealing with the lackings of
    the library.
  - Owen noted welcoming patches
  => Yousef, M. / Sameer, M.

+ ixterm
  - Compilation and installation is very cumbersome
  => All (should be put to 'developer' and author constantly involved)


I may have omitted one or 2 things, but what we have here is a plate
full of challenges that need to be tackled for this new year.

Also, after the irc session, we should have already announced 2 things
regarding the ACE program:
  1. The transfer of ACE from linux-egypt to Arabeyes
  2. The announcement of the new ACE

Aside from that, Youcef has agreed to write-up a summary of the IRC
session for public consumption, as well as the conclusions (if any)
reached (simply a briefing of the session).

If you are unhappy with the assignments, please do let me know and we
can try to work something out. Otherwise please do confirm wanting to
take it on.. Once we are settled for the people within 'core' we will
put the list up on the 'developer' list and publically discuss it with
the non-core members involved.

We need to move away from putting all the work on the 'core' group and
delegating a lot more often.

Regards,

Mohammed Elzubeir