Hello Sankarshan, please see my comments inline.
On Sun, 2005-03-06 at 18:33 +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhay wrote: > charles-h.schulz wrote: > > I'm only concerned by the viablity and success of > > OpenOffice.org in India... > > Charles, you make replying to e-mails such a difficult task :) hah, sorry about that. Please find my comments inline. > > Quoting from an earlier mail of yours: > > <quote> > > I have a broader question, that goes beyond the ranting. > Don't you think all the Indic languages represented here (and > the ones to come) should get a common, informal structure, > designed to help them and mutualize the work load? > > </quote> > > On a personal note, I take objection to the use of the term *rant* for > what is a genuine concern from the OO.o team on the success of OO.o in > India. > > There are primarily many interlinked issues in this case. First, the > efforts towards attempting a successful desktop migration (which is what > is happening with great enthusiasm) requires that a *complete* office > component should be presented. OpenOffice.org fits the bill nicely. > Additionally, L10n of applications is proposed to be a way out in > re-inforcing the immediate relevance of a FLOSS stack on the desktop. It is true indeed. Yet, OOo has a market share that relies heavily on Windows (more than 60% of our users run OOo on Windows) and hence, we cannot only focus on the free desktop part. We have rather lazily tried to contact Gnome developpers but this attempt has to be put on our account of failures and missed opportunities. (But we will try that again, some day) > > L10n as we see it (and please do correct me if I am wrong) is working at > 2 levels: > > [1] Creation of a L10n framework which can be used for extension of a > services infrastructure. eg http://grind.randomink.org > > [2] Completion of application level L10n eg the various N-L projects in > Indic languages in OO.o > > The downside of this (or should I say these) is the fact that we have > only a limited number of developers working on the projects. In fact the > same set of people could be working on Gnome, KDE, Mozilla and OO.o. So > *stories* don't get publicised. We all know that too well, and I don't criticize that. Ressources is the main issue for NL projects. > > For example, I would readily admit that http://bn.openoffice.org seems > to be singularly bereft of activity. However, it stands to reason that > even though file translation process has been hit by the recent lack of > volunteers, testing of bugs against various builds have not. Thus, one > of the immediate action points would be talk about them on the mailings > lists that we have. Instead, sometimes we take the easy way out and blog > them (at places like http://planet-india.randomink.org) > > As regards the *informal structure* that you mention. I'm happy to note > that we are fast on track towards creation of a consortium which is > aimed at addressing such issues. > > The informal nature causes a lot of pain as a good number of L10n > resources are tied into Government bodies which for justified reasons > wish to align themselves with bodies as opposed to bodies of persons > interested in L10n. I would like to set up an informal structure encompassing every Indic project on OOo, wether they are government-funded or not, that would be able to mutualize ressources for all the Indic communities. The point being that even though India is a large country with many languages, if OOo succeeds, say, in Bengal, this success may "contaminate" the Andra Pradesh, or the Gujarat regions. So, there is a strategic interest for putting up this informal group of projects. This will also help situations like the one we know for Hindi project being much less likely as there will be a real cross-projects communication, and a better visibility all around the NLC. > > > Please, whenever you have news, let us know here on this list, > > and if you want them to be recorded and included in the > > official OpenOffice.org newsletter, post them on the > > [email protected] > > /me readily agrees. Thanks. Do we have an agenda on the informal structure? Do we/everybody from the Indic project agree? Best, Charles. > > Warm regards > Sankarshan > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
