Re: Hello world..

[Djihed Afifi <djihedlists at googlemail dot com>]

Ahmad, Welcome! We're happy to have you. 

> I was originally planning on waiting about a month before requesting
> membership to become more accustomed to how you do things, and I also
> have my term exams coming up in January, but If the deadline is that
> near and you guys need all the help you can get maybe I can start now
> and assign a portion of my time for translation, and after the exams I
> can work full-time. Yes, I have no life ;-). 

Hey, you're in the right club ;-) I too have exams next Jan (three)

Gnome 2.18 tarballs (which contain translations) are due on 5th March.
So the January/February period will be crucial to complete translation.
Fortunately, if we finish gnome-2.16 now, we won't have much to do for
gnome-2-18, there will be about 10% left to translate the official gnome
packages, at most 3500 strings, not much =)

So we will concentrate on really Good Quality and completing the
remaining strings (which will be at most 10%). Delivering a high quality
fully translated Gnome will be our mission for 2.18. If possible, we can
even start working on the other non official Gnome applications (like
dia, gparted, etc). There is lots of fun stuff to do.

> I have had a brief history translating Windows software (Opera,
> PopTray, RuMSX, and other small utilities) and I have been a full-time
> linux user for about a year now (though I still dual-boot).

Very good, this will help you very much to get started :)
At any time, if you have questions please let us know, everyone will be
happy to help.

> I see that Evolution is not fully translated up till now, and I would
> like to get my hands on it if that's OK, though if you need me on
> other files I don't mind. 

Evolution is the coolest app, it is also the app with the most strings
ever! if you complete this, it will be a milestone to make gnome2.16 and
2.18 happen. I will send you the evolution file privately. Khaled should
have sent some details about it by now.

Also, for reference, you might like to download all of the files. You
can do so from here by clicking "download tarball".

http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/translate/gnome/gnome-2-16/

> So, now what? If I'm accepted someone will send me a .po file or what?
> I already have gTranslator installed. (any of you have better
> recommendations btw?).

In my experience gtranslator is the least capable.

There is also poedit, and kbabel, I happen to prefer poedit, many others
prefer kbabel. I recommend you play with them briefly and see what you
are most comfortable with.

> Final question: if Gnome 2.18 is translated fully at release time,
> does that mean that Feisty Fawn (next Ubuntu release) will be fully
> arabized? that would be sweet :-) ) 

It means that all official Gnome applications in Feisty Fawn will be
arabised. Which is, yes, very cool! What's cool, is that all
distributions will have our work by their next release.

The other ubuntu specific packages have to be done by the ubuntu team.

Djihed