preliminary gnome plan

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

Salam all,

Here is my preliminary gnome plan for the coming months.

where we are:

nearly every important/pseudo-important thing is finished. from
translating the whole desktop to translating important apps to working
on bridges for the future. So for the core there is nothing more to do.

I reported nearly all what I know about rtl bugs. patches are in or
being worked on, and all in all the whole looks very promising.

I am thinking to ask about the inclusion of the persian fonts into the
gnome bitstream package too.

Where will we go:

So let us start on the minor important apps which can be potentially
important.

gnumeric, planner, anjuta, glade, gimp (the whole gimp).

These are nearly 7000 strings. So they will take some time to do.
Abdulaziz that's your playground start/stop on WHATEVER you want.

The problem is: there isn't any clear "app view" in the gnome world
right now the majority are afraid of Longhorn, alliances are made with
mozilla, discussions going on about which language to use: mono,java,
XUL etc... but discussion about the GUI itself is very stagnant. best
example is gossip a very boring IM client that will get (very lickely)
included into the gnome desktop. The app is HIG compliant and it's easy
to use but nothing more nothing less... All the excitement and work is
going towards the platforms not the apps... Also in this year no new app
emerged in the gnome world like the years before where every week new
apps came from nothing... This is imperative to the evolution of the
Desktop, and for a clear view of the future of the Desktop.
So for us the whole is simply remilking the cow and working on existing
apps, which, for itself, is not a bad thing.

Especially for newbies like Abdulaziz, working on gnumeric will be a BIG
challenge :)

common terms po:

I want us to concentrate more on quality. Fedora was finished, MDK too,
gnome anyway... So now raw input is there, thousands of thousands of
words, we cannot unite the way of translating sentences, but we can work
on the words we use. That's why I think, now, this common words po
became imperative.
Building a database which can be easily consulted with multiple choices
and a VERY good quality is very important now. This will take time but
this is important.
using the qamoose and dic platforms to deliver this database for the
user.
having multiple choice when needed...

AND the point which not all will agree on: only translators will work on
this file.

Will Mohammed translate 60 words a week? veeeery unlikely. Will Ossama
do it? I think he will translate 600 a day...
So to get this going, to get this done and because this became
imperative we have to do it quickly and we have to do it in grand style.

the real problem is not: 60 words are too few, the real problem is: from
the inception of this file till today, when did work really started with
momentum on it?!

the common terms po itself will be good for every future work. We will
no more work on little 200 string pos, I am sure that with every major
upgrade we will get thousands and thousands of strings, hundreds of pos
we will have to work on.

Searching for every word in 1001 dic to find it, and then get a NO from
one of the members is VERY contraproductive.

but simply linking the searchedword to an applet on the panel, type the
word -> use it -> done, is the real heaven, and you know what I mean ;)

So my proposal on this will be to work with more strings devided btw
translators only, the non-translators can take a look at every end of
the week and approve/discard what they don't like -> tell me and I make
the changes.

Back to gnome:

at the beginning gnome was as messy as KDE was some weeks ago, maybe
messier as no one really cared to work on gnome.
I missed the 2.2 deadline as you all know with a 100% translated gnome
and a red a*#... Now the whole is really on track again, and not only on
track, as the Dekstop itself the translation only needs further
development as polishing was also done.

gnome itself will simply get some updates before the next version comes
out. 

some dates:

today, 2.7.1 release (nothing new here)

19th july #IMPORTANT#: API freeze, this is NOT a string freeze but this
means we have to start here with translation regardless of having 1
string to work or 10000.
Api freeze: the basic api is in, the whole structure will be stabilized
and no more big code will be added.
(api stands for application program interface btw)

30th August: tarballs due for release candidate 1, this time around I
want us to be in before the candidates are out to test any bug.
So 30th august is the deadline for the translations.
NO WORK will be accepted. This means that if I assigned you a file and
you didn't complete it before this day I'll not let you in with your
file.

And this means that if Arabic support is not 100% then its YOUR fault.

15th september: release, a nice party and some presents I want to send
to the helpers this time. So help to get a nice present from germany ;)


so to resume:

work now is going towards the gnome-office modules, the dev modules and
the gimp.

with the 19th july, and maybe some weeks before, work will start on
gnome.

work has to be finished before the 30th of August.

a party will be held at the 15th of september.


common terms po:

proposal:

-only translators work on the file, non-translators review it. With
deadlines if you miss to review the translation before the weekly
deadline your voice does not count for that group of words.

-old idea: common terms po counts for every project and will be linked
as wordlist po to the dic system in arabeyes.

for further suggestions, questions,etc...
pls ask, comment,etc...

yours
Arafat

p.s:the gnatt chart is coming, wait some more hours ;)
p.p.s: a wiki page for gnome is good I'll send you the needed files
Abdulaziz.