IMPORTANT STUFF

[Chahine Hamila <HALCON11 at terra dot es>]

Salam folks,
this is my first connection day in at least a couple of weeks, so be
patient with me in case I am supposed to answer a few things.
Ramadan kareem...
ok folks, two things,
first, about Akka, it's almost over. I couldn't finish it though because
I needed some documentation I couldn't access because of my lack of
connection. It'll take me an afternoon to have an InP version, but I
caught some ... atrasado... late work (?) ... which I have to do before
I can do anything else, and I have to complete my settling in Spain
before I can continue.
Now, THE IMPORTANT STUFF: I'm in contact with folks involved in
provincial affairs in Aragon, Spain, (Spain, like the US, is a federal
state) and in my work, someone (sparing you some details: an interesting
contact) saw a soft I made for myself to train my Spanish. So he asked
me about Arabic support in order to make bilingual soft for the
integration of immigrants, mainly of Maghrebi and Eastern European
origin here for the non Spanish-speaking ones. Of course, I avoided
talking about Windows, so I told him Arabic support was very incomplete
and experimental. To summarize the exchange, he asked me who was working
on Arabic support, and I answered him that friends and I were, but that
we were doing it on a volunteering basis, so things were advancing
extremely slowly. So he asked me to submit a project whose goal is to
create a piece of software that would teach Spanish to Arab adult
immigrants. I will send you details of what he would like to see in such
a soft, but it might get funding from the Aragonese government if
seriously presented (and might not of course, no need to start dreaming
until one sees the money;)). FYI, it happens that Aragon is one of the
richest provinces in Spain, has no unemployment, and seeks to develop
itself. They might want to distribute the soft on over Spain.
I saw here a very good opportunity to get funding for arabization, since
even if we had to develop for Windows, we could use the portable
toolkits we have (like for example GTK, libxml, and most other standard
libraries used in Linux) and include their arabization as part of the
project package (always keeping in mind of course that the project is
not arabization, we're only seizing an opportunity to grab funds for
arabization here;)).
Anyway, I told him I would discuss it with you guys and give him some
feedback.
Guys, with your experience in technical arabization (plus Mustafa's
linguistic expertise in teaching Arabs foreign languages) I could try to
get you involved and have some serious things done here.
Please don't have any illusion, and I insist on this, most projects
always end up being only that, projects. But if you guys tell me that
you want to be SERIOUSLY COMMITED, and I meant it when I say I need your
SERIOUS COMMITMENT on this, I can invest my time on it if you make an
effort, because who knows, we might get something after all (arabization
+ job and/or free tourism in Europe for you;)).
Please reply ASAP for more details if you are interested.
Salam,
Chahine