Re: project proto proposals

[Mohammed Sameer <msameer at foolab dot org>]

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Gregg, Embedded reply!

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 08:29:10AM -0500, Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> First is to expand the scope of Arabeyes from Linux/Unix to Free/Open 
> software.

Actually, It's mentioned in the Arabeyes Manifesto that we do support FLOSS.
Maybe it's a fact that we do support GNU/Linux more, But this is mainly due to
a few things IMHO
1) Most of us actually work under GNU/Linux.
2) I don't find a lot of people working with FLOSS under the win32 environment.

Note that most of what we do currently is translation which has nothing
to do with he operating system layer.

Also what we address are issues reported by people,
And people didn't report win32 problems here!

> So I propose that Arabeyes change from "The Arabic Unix Project" to 
> something like "The Project for Free/Open Computing in Arabic".  The 
> operating system should not be the focus; after all, these days many if 
> not most open source projects are OS agnostic, and usually even end up 
> supporting Windows.  The focus should be first on Arabic support, and 
> second on portability.

I guess we should be actually be the Arabic FLOSS project.

> For end-users, the Arabeyes proposal then becomes "no matter what your 
> operating system is, we can help you compute in Arabic with free/open 
> software, and most of it will be cross-platform as well, so that you can 
> later switch to a different OS and your computing environment will look 
> the ssame."  For developers, the proposal is "we can help you enable 
> Arabic support regardless of your target OS, and we'll also help you 
> make sure your app is portable across OS's."

The point is that we might have a lot of people interrested in Arabic under non free OSs.
I'm one of them for example, If it's a problem with a FLOSS application that is only
affecting the win32 then I won't really bother.
Of course this is MY PERSONAL OPINION not my opinion as an Arabeyes core member.

> Arabeyes is to create an RDF vocabulary for describing the Arabic 
> capabilities of software.  Given a piece of software like a text editor, 
> one needs to know basic things like which charsets it supports, does it 
> support arabic shaping, etc., but one would also like to know which 
> platforms it works on, whether it supports local date/time formats, 
> sorting/searching, etc.  Also whether the GUI is fully R-to-L and in 
> Arabic, if help files are translated, etc. etc.
>
> What got me thinking about this is that last winter I spent a lot of 
> time researching diff programs and xml editors trying to find good 
> Arabic support.  So I ended up with a checklist of products and 
> capabilities.  I didn't know it at the time but RDF is perfectly suited 
> for that kind of metadata.

Good idea, Why don't you start such a project ??

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