GNOME translation where we are and where we want to go.

[Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>]

Salam all,

After some silence reordering things seeing the whole GNOME project,
shedule release apps etc...
I want to discuss with you a little bit the current situation of GNOME
arabization, and the future plans.

GNOME 2.2 had finally 100% Arabic support. BUT we missed our goals,
indeed evolution gnumeric gimp  and Abiword translations had to begin
but this didn't happen, fortunately epiphany was at that time
translated. Work not officially declared but which I found nice to do
was translation of sound-juicer and gDesklets: Karamba for gnome.

So what will be the future?
GNOME 2.4 or 2.6, many will ask eh? we have to do 2.4 I'll say to you
yes and no...
>From my experience with more then one year of translation (1 year and 2
months I think now ;) I concluded that three things are very important:
having a good nose! completing work and knowing what to do.
This leads to the following:
when I opted before some months for epiphany no one knew about the
project, I translated the strings instead of working on galeon and at
the end epiphany was the official browser of GNOME!
When after that I began work on sound-juicer no one also knew what this
is but it is sheduled to get included for 2.6 now, this fact of being
ahead is very helpful for me I am only one translator and I have to
spend my resources wisely with the biggest possible impact.
What I now suggest for me and the Arabeyes team in general is working on
2.4 for sure BUT using the whole 7 months or more we get to rework
translations, AND work on important apps. 2.4 is as I've seen it only an
upgraded version of 2.2 but the impact of 2.6 will be HUGE as it will
include all what 2.4 included PLUS some of the best media apps for the
DE : totem, sound-juicer, rhythmbox... And at that time gnumeric and
Abiword will also have reched milestones with stable 2.xes this means
the REAL big step for GNOME and consequently for Arabization will be 2.6
and not 2.4, that's why I want to make 2.6 a success for us and the
whole Arabic linux users.

So what will I do?
For now I'll upload the po files to arabeyes cvs server and then take my
holidays :) After I'll come I'll continue work on the 2.4 desktop pos
especially gnopernicus which seems to be a huge app and begin polishing
the work we've done from the smallest po going to the biggest.
In that meantime or maybe after I'll begin on my pet project Abiword
with bug filling for bidi support, UI problems and continued
arabization. Gnumeric is also a hot cake but I don't know how to work on
this,I found a very good book on nilwalfurat dealing with technical
terms which I'll buy and I'll buy an english arabic dictionary I'm sure
this will help.
Well that's my plan for the future, any help is warmly welcomed as I'm
seeing ppl working on KDE I think some will maybe also want to work on
GNOME. I'm very rich btw I'll give you a salary of 100000000000$ a month
;) hehe 

for any suggestion, question or critic  please respond :)

cheers
Arafat