#Wikisource should be big

At #Fosdem you meet people from all over Europe. I met with one Wikisourcerer and we had a talk about this project. Even though it is an official Wikimedia Foundation project, it is very much a Cinderella; an  unloved daughter that is blossoming into beauty.

The one thing Wikisource is lacking is a bit of TLC. Compare it with the attention showered over GLAM, the contrast could not be starker. We all love GLAM (I do), it has had a global WMF fellow and now there is a person doing the works for the USA and it has the attention of many chapters. Wikisource is what some people do.

Actually what these people do, particularly when they are organised is very relevant and it supports one of the pillars of what we do; the public domain. The public domain is strengthened because it fulfils the role industry does not. It ensures the availability of works that are considered to be of no commercial interest. It brings attention to works that have a timeless value and for many languages it actually ensures that schools have books for kids to read.

There are several projects where people are digitising books, transliterating them. The one thing lacking is learning from best practices. The best source projects organised the acquisitions of books, the scanning, the transliteration, the distribution. The Malayalam Wikisourcerers for instance published a CD that was send to all schools in Kerala.

Wikisource is a project where our chapters are particularly well positioned to engage in Wikisource. It is practical and when done well it will help us in preserve and strengthen the public domain.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Reaching out to #Intel

A conference like #FOSDEM is big, some of the talks are influential and consequently it is a place where people are to learn about what is happening and how people think about technology and open source technology at that.

At breakfast we were sitting next to a gentleman working for Intel. He was very much into mobile communications so we reached out to him and discussed with him about our need to support input methods for languages like Tamil, Malayalam ... We told him that we provide web fonts.

You never know at the start of a conversation what will come out of it. What we do know is that support that is low in the technology stack has the most effect.
Thanks,
    GerardM

#Wikimedia is at #FOSDEM

We Wikimedians took the bus to FOSDEM. This proved to be a problem for some, the bus was full. As the buses are driving again, we are sad to have left some people out in the cold.

We are here for many reasons, some are on their way to Pune, some are here because Fosdem is awesome and a place to be. Several of us is here to meet open source developers looking for challenges and one of us is looking for the best of them.

I am here at Fosdem to talk about languages and language support. I would love to connect to other projects who are oriented to the whole of the web and all its languages.

So when you are into language and language support, find me and talk to me.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#betacowork ; a great place to work in #Brussels

In time for #FOSDEM; #Wikimedia people were looking for a place to work, have great connectivity and talk shop. At BetaGroup Coworking we found a warm welcome, and experienced how its customers are provided with what they need. For us it was a white board and guess what, someone brought chocolate cake..

We found a quiet spot where we discussed the usability and the user interface of the Translate functionality. Having Jon Harald with us proved to be a boon. He did the project management for the Fundraiser localisations and brought us a large amount of observations and suggestions.

Having a white board allowed us to easily visualise our ideas and as easily replace them with something else, something better. Once we achieved a common understanding, Jon Harald's input was translated in a "user story" by Siebrand and this will eventually end up as more work for Niklas.

PS According to Jon Harald it is not cold ... not cold enough to wear a coat.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Narayam II may even support the Latin #script

Typing with 10 fingers is a skill that makes using a computer so much easier. It is utterly frustrating when you have to use an AZERTY keyboard at Fosdem in Brussels. The keys are not where they should be and your ability is downgraded to the hunt and peck entry method.

Typing AZERTY is relatively straightforward; a small number of keys are positioned differently but all the keys are there. It is different for languages like Lingala where a word like Mbɔ́tɛ has characters you will not find on the US International keyboard. Seriously more difficult.

The InScript keyboard

At this time the Narayam extension is focusing on the languages and scripts of the Indic languages. When you consider that there are over 500 languages in India, you will appreciate that there is a lot of ground to cover. The last news is that Oriya and Sinhala are supported as well.

At this stage, Narayam expects the US International keyboard so the AZERTY keyboards are still safe for now from foreigners overlaying it with a keyboard layout they are comfortable with,
Thanks,
      GerardM

Bahman 22nd. 32nd Anniversary of Iranian Revolution

Dear Gerard. Hi.

Today is bahman 22nd. 32nd Anniversary of Iranian Revolution. It's usual. Blogspot is censored The government temporarily blocked all SMS, and Internet access last year after the 2009 Iranian election protests(yup. here, this article is censored too). So the censorship might be temporary.

I'm not interested in politics, but it affects us. I can't read your blog. I was wondering if you could create an alternative means for reading your new blog posts. like a mirror, copy,download, newsletter mail, ... I'm asking this because "blog" is about "news" and if blogfa re-opens late, there is neither time for nor benefit in reading so many posts

Since I  don't know whether this is hard to do or not, I only expect your help if this is "very easy"

thanks, Ruhollah

At Fosdem, the ability of governments to throw the switch on the Internet and to censor was a theme in many presentations. The most prominent presentation was by Eben Moglen who introduced the freedom box and spoke at length about the need for mesh networks and the decentralisation of social software.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot and even Wikipedia are easy targets for those regimes who do not abide by the freedom of speech. If my blog was somewhere on a server, Ruhollah would still be reading my blog while he now needs a way to bypass the censor.

The freedom of speech has its value when it is accompanied by an ability to participate. The value of social media to its users is in the ease of reaching out and communicating to friends and "friends". Some legislations have freedom of speech enshrined in law. It is time to enshrine the freedom to communicate in the software itself. Software that is resilient and has no kill switch.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Bilder einer Ausstellung

#MuseScore wowed me at #Fosdem. What it does is provide you with a way to provide all kinds of functionality with a music score.

When you have a video with a synchronised score, it becomes possible to do karaoke on the piano or the guitar. The format is some kind of XML and the output needs to be rendered. The rendering is not rocket science; it needs to be done and from then on it just needs to be used.

Just think the fun we can put into our articles when people can read about music and just play.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Firefox only reports to you

I love the phrase "Firefox only reports to you". This explains best what distinguishes Firefox from the "other" browsers: you can rely on Mozilla in the same way it relies on you.

Another interesting announcement was about the imminent update of the Drumbeat website..
Thanks,
    GerardM

Nikerabbit's thinkpad

At Fosdem Nikerabbit's laptop was stolen. To Nikerabbit and to translatewiki.net, this was quite a blow.

We did ask on translatewiki.net and on this blog for a way to help. It is with gratitude that I can post this photo of Nikerabbit reading the fine manual of his new thinkpad.

Thank you Wikimedia Foundation for helping out. This was most welcome :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

Usability.wikimedia.org

There is a wiki for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative and it has one nice surprise; it uses the Liquid Threads extension for its talk pages.I have started two threads on my user page and I find the way it feeds into the recent changes really intriguing.

The Liquid Threads provide a paradigm shift away from the current talk pages and, I do welcome having more control over the discussions. With the implementation of LQT in the Usability wiki, I think there is no need to have a separate implementation in the labs environment.

I wonder what it takes for a labs implementation to happen. Brion indicated in his FOSDEM presentation, that Semantic MediaWiki is a mature technology, I would welcome a labs implementation. I would love to learn what the procedure is for getting one.
Thanks,
GerardM

Nikerabbit's laptop

Nikerabbit is the principal developer at Betawiki. He came to Fosdem this year. We had a great time; it was great to have people like MinuteElectron, Siebrand an Nikerabbit meet Brion. It was important to discuss what we can do with the MediaWiki internationalisation and localisation and what we cannot. It was really important that Nikerabbit was there.

When we came back to our car, we had the unpleasant surprise that the car had been broken in to. Nikerabbit's bachpack with his laptop, his passport and his clothes was gone. Niklas is a student. He works as a volunteer. His work is indispensible.

If you can help Niklas out, it would be really welcome.
Thanks,
       GerardM

How an extension gets to Betawiki

We are with a large group of MediaWiki developers at Fosdem. We talked with the Mozilla people. We had a look at their wiki and, they have a really interesting extension that supports videos from many video hosts. Siebrand had a look at its code, its license. He picked it up and committed it after some work on the code and the messaging to SVN. It is now at Betawiki.. A thank you is due toRuiz, the author of the code.


We have another thing to talk about with the Mozilla people.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Brion speaks at Fosdem

Brion will be speaking at FOSDEM in the "Collaboration" track. This is a VERY good reason to come to Brussels as well and enjoy great beer, great company and great conversations about everything and MediaWiki. I know that Siebrand intends to be there. Several other have expressed their intention to be come. It is likely that we will demonstrate the ExtensionTesting environment...

So check your agenda, and see you in Brussels :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Asterisk at Fosdem

, fosAt Fosdem, I met some of the Asterisk developers. For those that do not know, Asterisk is the leading edge open source software for telephony. If I understand things well, it is even used in the WMF Office. I had a really wonderful talk with one of the senior Asterisk developers. What I learned that for telephony localisation is very much about the differences in telephony between countries. The dial tone, the exchanged tone is different from country and when a person is ringing in from a different country it helps THEM to understand what the status of their call is.

So where Internationalisation is about how telephone exchanges work for Asterisk and where Internationalisation is about language for what I am used to, it seems to me that a combination of the two is what makes a most compelling package.
Thanks,
GerardM