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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    [kde-edu-devel] Re: Kiten
From:       Thomas Diehl <thd () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-07-25 14:45:58
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On Thursday 25 July 2002,  Klas Kalass wrote:

> How do you decide which program is of general interest, then? Especially in 
> kdeedu that is impossible. For illustration I will list some programs in 
> kdeedu and what the target groups of those are:

First: Please CC me if you want me to see postings to this list. I am not 
subscribed. It may also be a good idea to keep kde-i18n-doc on CC. This thing 
wasn't started by me (again).

As for which programs to include into edu I'd say: Anything you can expect in 
the curriculum of most (high) schools in most countries. And also everything 
for which you can reasonably expect interest among the users of most 
countries all over the world. I'd simply like to suggest that every developer 
asks him/herself whether the app (or what's the app is about) is worthwhile 
for our 60+ language teams to translate. If the answer is "yes", include it. 
If unsure, let's discuss it before including it in CVS.

You can say, of course, that learning languages is part of about any 
curriculum worldwide. But that's about the only agreement you will get. 
_Which_ language should be the one to include will differ from region to 
region. Therefore, I'd suggest to only include programs that are usable for 
learning about any language or at least a whole system of languages. Examples 
would be KVoctrain, KMessedwords and, maybe, KLettres. But I would also 
suggest to not include courses for individual languages like Kiten, KVerbos, 
or knorskverbs.

If we start including them where should we stop? Not at all, , ie including 
hundreds of these courses one day? I'd say this is the shortest way to make 
translation teams give up on the edu module alltogether. Or are we going to 
include only the "top ten" like Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali and a few 
others? But this would leave no place for a lot of things that are considered 
highly educational at least in some parts of the world, like Latin, Sanskrit, 
or Ancient Greek. To me, this wouldn't make sense either.

At the moment I would suggest to either move the programs to extragear or 
create an extra module for them which would be handled in a similar way as 
extragear.

> flashkard: Someone who wants to learn something (the most general it can get 
> for kdeedu)
> [...]

Don't see a problem with any of the programs you listed. But I'm foreseeing 
big (and very much growing) problems if we keep adding individual courses for 
each individual language on the planet.

>I have to agree with Jason: If the app is of regional non-interest, then 
> don't translate it for those regions because it is not worth the effort 
> obviously.

Well, if we start the "don't translate it if you don't like it" thing again we 
can just as well merge the extragear back into the main modules. At least for 
the translators, it was the whole point of creating extragear that we wanted 
completely localized desktop environments and wanted to keep everything out 
that was highly specialized or would duplicate functionality. And "highly 
specialized" clearly also means to me "programs that are only of regional 
interest".

Regards,

Thomas


















Am Donnerstag, 25. Juli 2002 11:24 schrieb Thomas Diehl:











> Am Donnerstag, 25. Juli 2002 01:45 schrieb Jason Katz-Brown:
> > Sorry, I did not realize this list was required reading, I should
> > subscribe.. thanks to neil for pointing the thread out.
>
> I also sent some of the complaints to kde-edu-devel.
>
> > I know many many more Non-Japanese that use Kiten than Japanese people
> > (maybe they are too quiet :) that use Kiten. Japanese seems to be a
> > popular language (or at least the demand for looking up words), just
> > because Anime and Manga are popular. Not to mention a Chinese and German
> > dictionary works as well. However, I don't think this is the best reason;
> > I don't really see a problem. If translators make claims that 99.9% of
> > their users won't use an app, then doesn't it make sense not to translate
> > it?
>
> No. Most language teams are aiming for fully translated user environments
> and (apparently) think that KDE proper should only contain programs of
> "more general interest". It is, of course, debatable what's really "general
> interest". But I think we can safely assume that programs for learning just
> one single language (like apparently Kiten, KVerbos, and Knorskverbs) are
> _not_ "general interest" by any stretch of imagination. The counterexample
> would be KVoctrain which tries to support any language in any direction.
>
> This, of course, does also _not_ mean specialized programs were unimportant
> for their users. (I have to work a lot under Windows myself exactly because
> of the lack of such specialized programs.) But, IMO, they do not belong to
> KDE core, they belong to kdeextragear. This was one of the reasons we
> created this module in the first place.
>
> > The last thing I want, though, is translators feeling like they spent the
> >  last hour translating 200 messages for nothing. That wouldn't be good
> > for anybody. Thanks,
>
> I'm sure, all translators (or users) interested in these programs will
> easily find them in extragear and work on them. Are you okay with moving
> Kiten there?
>
> Regards,
>
> Thomas

-- 
KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org
Deutsche KDE-Uebersetzung: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/de
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