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Translation and keyboard in Anaconda test day
30/08/10
In a united effort from the i18n and l10n teams we are going to host a test day regarding translations and keyboard support in Anaconda. We are accepting feedback from users and contributors around the globe. It would be nice to receive tips from people using different keyboards layouts from a variety of languages. This kind of test is tricky because of the diversity involved in internationalization and keyboard support. That’s why we need help from everyone who can test or even just telling us what you think it is important or worth testing.
There are some test cases I’m willing to improve for a better test coverage. If there is something else you think we might cover please let me know. I intend to add a few more steps for post install in order to test if Anaconda did its job correctly. You can also collaborate with ideas using our Track ticket.
New directions
02/08/10
It has been an interesting time for me as a Fedora Ambassador. In the past few years I worked pretty much locally in events such FISL and Latinoware and also focusing my efforts on the coordination of the Brazilian Portuguese Translation Team, what gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about the community. Curiously, this year has been particularly different, not only due to the fact that I left the coordination to work on localization and internationalization quality assurance but also that I have been working closer to international ambassadors. Unfortunately, Rodrigo Padula left most of his activities as an ambassador to work on another projects. He was the only Brazilian ambassador working closer to the international ambassadors community and that left a communication hole with ambassadors around the globe, specially the ones from Latin America.
We realized that having just one person responsible for this communication is not enough because when he or she leaves it became harder to put things back on place. So we decided that anyone who is wiling to work on this will be welcome in order to avoid lack of communication in the future. I really don’t think that in LATAM language differences are a barrier for anything, but there is a clear issue of scalability. For instance, the Brazilian and the Chilean community are particularly big and need someone to help communicating with other countries. Fortunately, me and other guys are stepping up and participating more in the international ambassadors mailing list, in the LATAM mailing list and IRC channels. Participating in FUDCon Santiago was a great way of improving this relation for me. Chile is growing an interesting open source community that I was able to get closer and understand better.
My role on Fedora Project changed when I left the coordination of the translation team to work on localization and internationalization QA and I’m glad that it is changing even more. I am happy to find new ways of working for our community. We built a strong and vibrant community in Brazil in the past years and must keep improving the way we organize ourselves.
FUDCon Santiago: Day #3
20/07/10
I know this is coming a lot late but we had some problems with the Internet at the hotel in Santiago. Anyway, the last day of FUDCon had interesting talks by Toshio Kuratomi and Domingo Becker, two of our rock stars, as Toshio himself likes to say.
I gave a talk about how internationalization works and how we can make it better on Fedora. I tried to explain it from the developer level until the user level. Some guys got surprised by the huge amount of work it takes to internationalize and localize a piece of software.
At the closing talk everyone watched to a thrilling speech of the new Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith. After that we took a lot of pictures and celebrated one more FUDCon in Latin America!
Muchas Gracias Chile!
FUDCon Santiago: Day #2
20/07/10
The day started with three interesting talks: “Joining Fedora Infrastructure” by Dennis Gilmore, “Monkey, the next generation Web Server” by Eduardo Silva and “RPM packaging lessons” by Gomix and Daniel Bruno.
After all talks we got together to discuss Fedora organization in Latin America. Although it was a bit messy and noisy that was a good opportunity to clarify the needs of the region and define some points we should work on. They include trying to prepare the FUDCon LATAM earlier and also trying to do a BarCamp in the next one and see how it goes with the Latin America audience.
FUDCon Santiago: Day #1
15/07/10
We got FUDCon started today here in Chile after a lot of months of hard work. The cold weather (at least for Brazilians) didn’t prevent us from have a nice time. Today we already had a lot of talks about all kind of subjects like GNOME 3, LATAM infrastructure, Inkscape and many more.
My first talk was about Fedora’s spins and remixes. I have never talked Spanish for that long and it has been a good opportunity to practice. I guess the audience got it right and I was able to reply the questions properly. You might want to take a look at the slides if you are able to read in Spanish. Also, it was great to meet the new Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith.
Opening talk by Jared
Tomorrow Dennis Gilmore will give a talk about how to join Fedora Infrastructure and Daniel and Guillermo will talk about RPM packaging. Those are just the first talks, we will have a lot more! Give a look at the event wiki page for further information.
Gracias!
FUDCon: Fedora’s World Cup
07/07/10
The World Cup isn’t over yet, but since Brazil is already out I expect Spain to be the champion. Random guesses apart, while the most important soccer tournament is still happening in South Africa I’m preparing myself for another event that will take place in Santiago, Chile. Next week the Fedora Project will be hosting the second Fedora Users and Developers Conference in Latin America. The first one took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year and I was there too.
This year we will have the presence of the new Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith, and also interesting sessions from Toshio Kuratomi, Dennis Gilmore, Daniel Bruno. Jayme Ayres, Rodrigo Padula, Domingo Becker and many more folks from Fedora.
I will be holding a technical session about spins and remixes in Fedora, and also a hackfest regarding internationalization and localization quality assurance. It will be a good opportunity to meet some friends I haven’t seen for a while and also a great opportunity to create something good for Fedora. This is our own World Cup and Open Source is the big winner.
FUDCon Santiago complete schedule: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:LATAM_2010
Instalando o Fedora em um pendrive
04/05/10
O lançamento do Fedora 13 está se aproximando e muitos usuários já estão preparando seus backups para a nova versão, assim como as mídias necessárias para gravar as imagens baixadas da Internet. Entretanto, pessoas mais preocupadas com o custo ambiental da produção e descarte de CDs e DVDs ou que simplesmente não queiram gastar com mídias óticas, optam por outras alternativas. Uma delas é a instalação a partir de pendrives, o que é bastante simples e pode ser feito tanto a partir de máquinas com Linux ou Windows.
Vamos aos passos:
1º – Baixe o arquivo da imagem ISO de um LiveCD. Particularmente recomendo o Spin BrOffice.org que já vem em Português por padrão. Ele está disponível em:
2º – Baixe o LiveUSB Creator, o programa que faz a mágica acontecer:
- Se infelizmente você usa Windows, baixe-o aqui: https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
- Se você já usa o Fedora, basta instalar o pacote liveusb-creator no Adicionar/Remover Programas.
3º – Insira o pendrive numa porta USB e abra o LiveUSB Creator
- Clique em “Browse” e selecione o arquivo .ISO que você baixou.
- Pronto, agora é só clicar em “Create Live USB”.
No LiveUSB Creator há outras opções como baixar o Fedora diretamente por ele ou criar um espaço de armazenamento persistente. Essa última opção é interessante para quem quer utilizar o Fedora a partir do pendrive no dia-a-dia, mas se tudo o que você quer é instalar o sistema no seu disco rígido, isso não é necessário.
Por que não usar formatos como mp3 e wma
19/02/10
Há cerca de um ano atrás fui consultado pelo IDG Now! sobre as dificuldades que o código aberto enfrenta em relação às patentes de software. Também escrevi uma coluna na 3ª edição da Revista Fedora Brasil sobre esse tema. A verdade é que nada mudou de lá para cá, então este post se faz necessário.
O melhor exemplo dessa questão são os formatos de mídia digital como mp3, wma e rmvb. Para quem não sabe, esses formatos são patentados em vários países. O reflexo imediato é que isso aumenta o custo de qualquer programa ou equipamento que reproduza esses tipos de arquivos.
O que você pode estar pensando agora é que em nenhum momento foi cobrado por isso. Engano o seu. O preço dos royalties (licenciamentos dessas patentes) está embutido na licença do seu sistema operacional (se é que você pagou por ela), do seu mp3 player e do aparelho de DVD que está aí perto da sua TV. Um dado interessante sobre essa questão é que o licenciamento desses formatos é responsável por até 1/4 do preço dos aparelhos de DVD.
A melhor parte é que você pode fazer algo para mudar isso, afinal de contas é o seu dinheiro que está em jogo. Para tanto, basta privilegiar formatos como o ogg, ogv ou flac na hora de ripar seus CDs, por exemplo, ou converter os arquivos que você já tem para compartilhá-los com outras pessoas. Esses formatos não são patenteados e podem ser implementados de maneira aberta e sem ônus. Privilegiá-los é essencial para torná-los mais conhecidos e para que um dia possam ser tornar um padrão, pois assim, além de você não pagar pelos royalties, não terá que se preocupar se o reprodutor que você pretende comprar roda mp3, mpeg, DivX ou seja lá o que for.
Playing with gettext and intltool
26/01/10
I have been learning how to use gettext and intltool in order to get some code internationalized. At first I thought it would very difficult to learn and get practical results but in fact the i18n libraries and tools are easy to work with.
The first choice was how to test them in a useful way and so I chose to do it using the Preupgrade code. Although I’m not very familiar with Python code I did this because this software is not internationalized yet and because it is “real code”, not just a Hello World example. I guess this is the greatest thing about open source software, you can just dig in and do whatever you want to and give it back, so IMHO this is a good place to start and a patch can come later. Another interesting thing about gettext is that it works pretty much in the same way for other languages. This is good because I intent to collaborate providing i18n support for other programs as well.
Preupgrade speaking some Brazilian Portuguese
So far I extracted 80 strings into the .POT file but I was not able to get the dialog titles internationalized yet, although they are marked as translatable in the Glade XML file. Once I fix this it will be good to go and I’ll find out how to get the i18n support automatically built into the package.
Passando a bola
16/01/10
Como é do conhecimento daqueles que acompanham o meu trabalho no Projeto Fedora, eu deixei a coordenação da equipe de tradução do nosso idioma. Foram quatro anos trabalhando nas traduções como um todo e três anos como coordenador. Foi um trabalho muito gratificante e com um retorno que eu jamais imaginaria em princípio.
Quem assume a coordenação agora é Taylon Silmer, que também é de Belo Horizonte e já faz parte do time de tradução do Fedora e do GNOME. Um dos desafios do novo coordenador será adaptar as interfaces para as novas regras ortográficas e manter o interesse da comunidade nas traduções.
É difícil deixar um trabalho reconhecido e bem sucedido como esse, mas em contrapartida vejo a necessidade de aprender algo novo. Agora pretendo ajudar na triagem, relato de bugs e QA (Quality Assurance – Garantia de Qualidade) de internacionalização, além de continuar mantendo o Spin BrOffice.org.
Eu gostaria de agradecer nominalmente ao Rodrigo Padula e ao Diego Zacarão que foram as primeiras pessoas com quem tive contato no projeto, ao Henrique Junior da Revista Fedora Brasil, a todos que sempre me apoiaram nesse tempo todo e principalmente aos que criticaram e ajudaram a melhorar os processos.
