#HTML5 and language support

The technology behind the Internet #matures; and consequently HTML 5 is becoming ever more established. HTML 5 is an open standard and the W3C is the organisation where HTML 5 is defined..

Amir went to a conference, HTML5FEST in  Ramat-Gan, he met people from Google, Mozilla, the W3C. Going to a conference is where you can learn about how language support can be achieved in the future.

For Amir it is clear that improvements to the HTML 5 specifications can do with some tweaking. Going to a conference, learning how things are done and how to get suggestions in can be more effective then writing code for a month, maybe more.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#CLDR and #GLIBC - what makes a #standard for locales II

Both GLIBC and CLDR register similar things. They register for similar but different purposes. One is a standard and the other is a de facto standard.

When people with the right background take an interest in a language like Sourashtra, they can have many objectives. What we are looking for are people who are interested in enabling, supporting and promoting the use of their language.

When a font is needed and they can point us to a freely licensed font, we can support them. When a keyboard is needed specifically for a language or a script, we can support them. When they provide us with the code to transliterate from one script to another, we can support them.

To do this for one application is a lot of work and there are so many applications out there, so much replication is happening. Many of these applications are as useful and relevant as MediaWiki. It is for this reason that all the language support teams are asked to verify and possibly amend and append standards like the CLDR or GLIBC.

With information available in the right places and with fonts, keyboard mappings and transliteration scripts shared widely, in a perfect world there will no need to ask to verify, amend and append. By working together using the same data, there will come a time when there is no longer anything to amend or append, when the data for a language new to Wikipedia will just be there.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Unicode support is relative

Regularly there are updates to Unicode. Not only are characters added, sometimes attributes of characters are changed. As Unicode is a standard, there is a whole process before changes are finalised. One such step is the "Public review".

A recent public review is about a change to the category of 12 characters. Once this change is accepted, it will change the behaviour for these characters. Organisations that provide Unicode support in their products will have to adopt their products.

The result of all this; displaying Unicode may differ depending on the version of software implementing the standard.
Thanks,
       GerardM

About standards

I blogged about collation and standards and, there has been quite some follow up. The most valuable result is an expressed wish to append the CLDR standard with information about Assamese. This is to be tempered with the observation that adding to the CLDR is a painful process. Information new to me is that collation for Indic languages has been added to GNU/C for Tamil and Malayalam and, that an unsuccessful attempt was made to update the CLDR standard.

The sad truth is that it is not always easy to have changes applied to standards. This has benefits and drawbacks. As standards organisations take their time, the result is likely to be of a high quality and it is definitely true that it is easier for known persons and organisations to get results. With a collation order described in a standard, the information necessary to implement collation is available to everyone. It has the added bonus that everyone can be asked to comply with the standard.

The lack of formalised information about a language is the key factor that inhibits a language on the Internet. Asking for the implementation of such rules can only follow.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Open Standards and the European Union

When Neelie Kroes was the commissioner for competition of the EU, it was an expensive experience for Microsoft. Now that she is the commissioner for digital agenda of the EU it may even become a devastating experience. When you read this speech of her, it is clear that the days of the dominance of proprietary standards in the EU government are coming to an end.

When businesses are to communicate with the EU they will have to conform to open standards. When Microsoft products do not provide such compliance, businesses will have no choice but to look for software that does.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#IE9 has inbuild irrelevance

#Microsoft announced on its blog that it will only support H264. As a consequence it does not support video as provided by the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation notably Wikipedia.

Video is technically about to get to the stage for Wikipedia where it will become more and more visible. There are contacts with GLAM that will provide us with relevant material, material that will not be provided in H264.

So there is this stand off not unlike the Apple and Adobe situation. The difference is that Microsoft has no control over the platform. In Europe Microsoft has to offer the choice of an alternative browser. It is quite easy to bypass IE elsewhere as well.

Given that Facebook is to provide Wikipedia content, two of the most popular websites will be suboptimal supported by the "new, mega, wonderful (insert your marketing adjective)" offering of Microsoft. As you are the customer and as you can, you can vote with your feet.
Thanks,
       GerardM

It is "cebuà", not "cebuano" in Catalan !!

At #translatewiki.net we use the #CLDR for the names of languages. When we are told that the data is wrong, we invariably ask people to fix it at the source. Often they do.

One fix is the name of the Cebuan language in Catalan; it is "cebuà". It is really important that people fix the CLDR in this way.
Thanks,
GerardM

In Friulian the language is called furlan and not friulano

In interwiki links on #Wikipedia, we use the native name of a language to refer to the article in other languages. For the Friulian language Wikipedia, it should say "furlan" but it says "friulano" because it defaults to the Italian translation.

We get these names from the CLDR, or Common Locale Data repository. The CLDR plays a vital role in the support of languages; with a bare minimum of information it becomes possible to make a language version possible in OpenOffice.org. One of the essential bits is the name of the language as it is called in that language.

In MediaWiki, we use the CLDR and consequently people are urged to ensure that the information in their language is correct. This was the message that was given for the Friulian language. It may be cumbersome, but it does ensure an improved support for a language.
Thanks,
     GerardM

How to collaboratively work on standards

For NEN, the standards organisation in the Netherlands, Wikipedia is considered as a model where a community is engaged. NEN invited me because I had presented at the ISO conference in Milan before.

I presented a few slides about Wikipedia and I added a slide about my view on standards. After this introduction there were two themes.

• How does Wikipedia work and, how does it finance itself
• How can the Wiki way be applied to the development of standards

For me it is quite obvious that standards have to be open and available to work. Having people pay to learn what a standard is about, damages the awareness about standards and it damages the objectives of what standards aim to achieve. This argument was appreciated by the people of the NEN, but their problem is that this monetary aspect is an essential part of making their budget.

When you consider developping standards by a community, you change the role of the standards organisation. From a full participant, it changes to the role of a process manager. This means that it guarantees the quality of what is delivered but is not so much involved in the content itself. This change in role, removes the argument why the NEN is not in the business of the certification of the implementation of standards. The argument is that there is a conflict of interest when you both define standards and get paid for assessing these same standards.

When a standards organisation is involved in standard development as a process manager and one who validates and certificates the implementation of standards, there is no longer such a conflict of interest.

The question then becomes what standards would a community wants to develop. I am sure that there are plenty of domains where the expertise of developing standards would be welcomed because standards make things measurable, more concrete.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Nen Introduction

View more presentations from Gerard Meijssen.

Standards for us all

Standards are used all the time, there are so many of them and many of them are really relevant. Standards can be as "simple" as the kilo or the meter or decide on things like is that a language..

As a follow up of having been to an ISO conference in Milan, I have been invited by the NEN, the Dutch normalisation instititute, to come and brain storm about standards and how more people can be involved in the process of standardising.

I am really excited about this; for standards to work people have to know them, understand them and feel that it is in their interest to comply with them. The issues are many and accessibility to the standards and the data included in standards is a big issue. It is also very much about who benefits from standards and who pays for the development of standards.

The NEN indicated that it is very much interested in what a Wiki approach could be.. I am really looking forward to this.
Thanks,
GerardM

Africa helping itself on the Internet

In December I blogged about the Afrigen project. In this project people are asked to add CLDR information for their language. Now after some months there are results and, I am impressed. Many languages have made a start and the first languages have completed all the information that is looked for in this standard.

In my opinion having quality information in the "Common Locale Data Repository" is a litmus test for readiness of a language for the Internet. The Afrigen project makes completed data available in their subversion.

The CLDR itself distinguishes levels of CLDR support; this includes how lists are sorted, how numbers are written and how a few languages are called. For this project to insist on a complete set of data takes courage but is in my opinion the right thing to do.

There are people who say that a language is on the map when it has its own Wikipedia, in my opinion a complete set of CLDR data has a much wider application.
Thanks,
GerardM

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The W3C has published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. These recommendations have been worked on to make the Internet more accessible for people with disabilities and for older people and it aims to increase the usability of websites across a variety of mobile devices.

This improved standard addresses the barriers to accessing the Web experienced by people with visual, auditory, physical, cognitive and neurological disabilities, and by older Web users with accessibility needs. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make content:

• Perceivable (for instance by addressing text alternatives for images, captions for audio, adaptability of presentation, and color contrast);
• Operable (by addressing keyboard access, color contrast, timing of input, seizure avoidance, and navigability);
• Understandable (by addressing readability, predictability, and input assistance); and
• Robust (for instance by addressing compatibility with assistive technologies).

The publication of this standard comes at a time when the Wikimedia Foundation is preparing its Stanton project team to address usability. Even with $890.000,-- there is only so much that you can do and the research by UNICEF has made it painfully clear how much work needs to be done on MediaWiki usability. Browsing the text of this improved standard, it is clear to me that this standard is written to a large extend for the classic websites that are quite static in nature. The content of wikis are generated by its communities and consequently it will be hard to make it available in all the different ways discussed in these guidelines. I do expect that there is much in there that is relevant.

The Stanton team will start its work in January with assessing what has already been done by others on usability. In the WCAG 2.0 it finds guidelines that help our projects to become accessible for people with disabilities. It is a happy coincidence that these standard have been published before this work actually started.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Ahead of the pack

The Wikimedia Foundation has a beautiful statistics presentation of the growth versus the size of its Wikipedias. Erik Zachte was inspired by the beautiful statistics by Hans Rosling's Gapcasts. This beautiful presentation ia available in two ways:

• an 8Mb Flash presentation
• a javascript-only 'Wikimedia Projects Growth Animated'

The second version requires HTML-5 this is a brand new work in progress and consequently it is only available in the latest browsers. Firefox 3 is in its beta 4 incarnation currently the only browser able to run this.

With the browser wars hotting up, it is great that Firefox can be found ahead of the pack where it really counts; ahead in supporting standards. Standards that are the same for everyone. I am also really happy that the WMF actively in the forefront of stimulating standards.
Thanks,
GerardM

WOSI, a really cool Open Source/Standards project

WOSI is a project of a Dutch school, the HVA, working on a software environment for "woningcorporaties". A woningcorporatie is an organisation that is involved in public housing. As an organisation they are genuinely capital intensive, their IT requirements are complex and evolving.

The objective of the school is to provide an environment for their students that will give them a real feel for what it is like to work in the ICT business and teach them Open Source and Open Standards. Students that are part of this project will experience that a project does not start from scratch, there is always something to build upon, there are always conflicting requirements, there is always the need to ensure interoperability because the use of Open Standards is a precondition.

The WOSI project is in its second year and, it is growing in size. Students from other disciplines are getting involved as there is overlap with other specialties like communications and marketing. More woningbouwcorporaties are interested in the project as well as other schools. The great thing is that as Open Source and Open Standards are key to this curriculum, professionals will be released to the job market that know how to apply these notions in real world scenarios. This is likely to prove the biggest boon to this really cool project.

Thanks,
GerardM