Hello,
This week, another software "freeze" for B2 machine is supposed to happen. Thanks to everybody contributed and gave moral support, Etoys part is basically in pretty good shape.
The developers' practice we learned from B1 machine is that they reflash the entire disk image very often, as there is no official system update mechanism for OLPC yet. This means that the software "deadline" isn't really a "dead" line. Everyday, people reflash the disk image with whatever we would like to put.
A difference of B2 machine is that it will be produced in bigger quantity, and some of them are going to non-developers. These non-developers wouldn't update the disk image, but they shouldn't care the detail so much either, hopefully. If our Etoys is functioning as much as it is doing now, these non-developers users will be fine, too.
Anyway, again, we are basically in good shape. However, we need to update the examples. Because we change fonts, all projects we would like to carry forward to B2 from B1 should be revisited and updated.
To help this process, I published a change set that automatically updates scriptors and watchers. However, there are some need for human intervention; the scriptors will become bigger so they may overlap, buttons or other widgets such as RecordingControlMorph won't get updated, etc., etc.
Also, it would be nice to have some more examples for Diego's Video stuff, WorldStethoscope and new sound features, times repeat, and Scott's event roll, etc.
If you have any suggestions, please send us project files.
Thank you!
-- Yoshiki
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 01:39:30 -0800
A difference of B2 machine is that it will be produced in bigger quantity, and some of them are going to non-developers.
One important detail is that many of the people getting the machines don't read English. So it would be great if the examples used translatable text. I would point out this comment:
http://digitalmediauniverse.blogspot.com/2006/12/etoys-precisa-de-uma-reviso...
but it is pointless for those who don't read Portuguese (see what I mean? ;-)
-- Jecel
Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 01:39:30 -0800
A difference of B2 machine is that it will be produced in bigger quantity, and some of them are going to non-developers.
One important detail is that many of the people getting the machines don't read English. So it would be great if the examples used translatable text. I would point out this comment:
I wonder if we could also make use of the work Yoshiki did for our C5 translation demo, where he added support for translating variables etc in the etoy objects and scripts.
Michael
Hi, Jecel,
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 01:39:30 -0800
A difference of B2 machine is that it will be produced in bigger quantity, and some of them are going to non-developers.
One important detail is that many of the people getting the machines don't read English. So it would be great if the examples used translatable text. I would point out this comment:
Some support for translation would be important. On the other hand, if a country/language group is large enough, it should be able to host its own set of these examples. Wikipedia doesn't rely on such (automatic) translation. And, yes, any kind of volunteer and help is always welcome!
http://digitalmediauniverse.blogspot.com/2006/12/etoys-precisa-de-uma-reviso...
but it is pointless for those who don't read Portuguese (see what I mean? ;-)
Now, you've got to to explain what this entry says!
-- Yoshiki
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
Some support for translation would be important.
There is Diego's "Babel" code in Squeak 3.8 (not to be confused with the project called "Babel" in Croquet) but that is only usable for computer generated strings, while most of the text in the examples are created by hand. And Babel doesn't deal with the layout problems that replacing text causes.
On the other hand, if a country/language group is large enough, it should be able to host its own set of these examples. Wikipedia doesn't rely on such (automatic) translation. And, yes, any kind of volunteer and help is always welcome!
That would be acceptable but OLPC doesn't want to have a per country distribution. So we would need some scheme to have multiple versions of the same projects and then have Squeak load the right ones. Except for the very top project selecting the right one could be just a matter of giving them different names.
http://digitalmediauniverse.blogspot.com/2006/12/etoys-precisa-de-uma-reviso...
but it is pointless for those who don't read Portuguese (see what I mean? ;-)
Now, you've got to to explain what this entry says!
He says you can program for the OLPC in Javascript (as he does in his AlphaCity project), Smalltalk (he points to his Squeak/Croquet tutorials) or Python. Then he talks about eToys and how people could use it to write games.
He mentions that he did some quick tests with the Squeak system included in the OLPC images and noticed that some parts had been translated to Portuguese while others were still in English, and said that would make it very difficult for the kids to use. He says he doesn't have time to work more with this, but it would be a good idea for someone to write some tutorials for teachers and kids. Then he links to a video of the eToys intro.
-- Jecel
Jecel,
There is Diego's "Babel" code in Squeak 3.8 (not to be confused with the project called "Babel" in Croquet) but that is only usable for computer generated strings, while most of the text in the examples are created by hand. And Babel doesn't deal with the layout problems that replacing text causes.
Exactly. It is kind of hard to use for longer explanatory text.
That would be acceptable but OLPC doesn't want to have a per country distribution. So we would need some scheme to have multiple versions of the same projects and then have Squeak load the right ones. Except for the very top project selecting the right one could be just a matter of giving them different names.
Hmm, I don't know if it ("OLPC doesn't want to have a per country distribution") is the policy... Some things such as the keyboard will be diferent, so the manual and documents related to that will be different. And each country has different curriculum. I would imagine that the bits that get shipped with the units will be different (but I don't know).
Now, you've got to to explain what this entry says!
He mentions that he did some quick tests with the Squeak system included in the OLPC images and noticed that some parts had been translated to Portuguese while others were still in English, and said that would make it very difficult for the kids to use.
Oh, yeah. Even Japanese translation is getting behind. We need some round to fix new phrases...
He says he doesn't have time to work more with this, but it would be a good idea for someone to write some tutorials for teachers and kids. Then he links to a video of the eToys intro.
-- Yoshiki
Hi all,
Jecel Assumpcao Jr escribió:
Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
Some support for translation would be important.
There is Diego's "Babel" code in Squeak 3.8 (not to be confused with the project called "Babel" in Croquet) but that is only usable for computer generated strings, while most of the text in the examples are created by hand. And Babel doesn't deal with the layout problems that replacing text causes.
¿Theres is somekind of documentation for the use of Babel? I have read about po4a[1] (Po for anything) and may be it could give support for translation of text in Squeak "documents". I have working previously on translation of documentation and the problems on having craft hand made translation as stated in the po4a document are great and will be nice if we try to avoid them from the beginning.
[1] http://po4a.alioth.debian.org/
On the other hand, if a country/language group is large enough, it should be able to host its own set of these examples. Wikipedia doesn't rely on such (automatic) translation. And, yes, any kind of volunteer and help is always welcome!
That would be acceptable but OLPC doesn't want to have a per country distribution. So we would need some scheme to have multiple versions of the same projects and then have Squeak load the right ones. Except for the very top project selecting the right one could be just a matter of giving them different names.
I think that in spite of having local customized distros and Squeak images, as Yoshiki said, having the translation coordinated or helped in someway with tools like po4a its important. If you see the Wikipedia example (wich relies only on "humaware" for localized content, without any help of the software infrastructure for that --unless you count the language tag), the spanish Wikipedia is in the 10th place, but spanish is the second one most used language (in terms of "sparse", not to quantity of people). That's not surprising if we take in account that English is the first language used on Internet (29%), followed by Chinese (13%) and Japanese(8%) and the forth is Spanish (7.5%). Besides, connectivity in Latin America is pretty poor compared with the places where the previous languages are dominant.
OLPC is also a possibility to help in a more language balanced Internet and digital content. So, would be really nice if we could have some kind of squeak script that takes all the text in the Objects showed in a content and extract them to use po4a (for example) in the strings and help translations in some way.
I was reading the "old" and good Squeak News E-zine and think that would be nice to have local folklore tales and other activities made in Squeak in the same way that Tansel Ersavas, even some of the articles would be adapted as learning activities and active essays, and if we can made that local folklore tales multilingual, then Squeak can make a bridge between childs different cultures and languages.
I will be posting some questions in my attempt to make my first interactive local folklore tale in Squeak (inspired in what Tansel made) and may be I will ask questions about multilingual content also. (¿It's this the proper place?)
Cheers,
Offray
Pdt: I was reading a Book on Squeak and OLPC in the last etoys image, but seems incomplete. This is an ongoing work or the writing its already done, somewhere?
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 03:34:10PM -0500, Offray Vladimir Luna C?rdenas wrote:
I was reading the "old" and good Squeak News E-zine and think that would be nice to have local folklore tales and other activities made in Squeak in the same way that Tansel Ersavas, even some of the articles would be adapted as learning activities and active essays, and if we can made that local folklore tales multilingual, then Squeak can make a bridge between childs different cultures and languages.
I will be posting some questions in my attempt to make my first interactive local folklore tale in Squeak (inspired in what Tansel made) and may be I will ask questions about multilingual content also. (?It's this the proper place?)
It is nice that you mention the excellent work of Tansel Ersavas. His "Squeak News" is a wonderful interactive book-on-disk, and is well worth reading today for inspiration.
Dave
Offray,
¿Theres is somekind of documentation for the use of Babel? I have read about po4a[1] (Po for anything) and may be it could give support for translation of text in Squeak "documents". I have working previously on translation of documentation and the problems on having craft hand made translation as stated in the po4a document are great and will be nice if we try to avoid them from the beginning.
LanguageEditor in Squeak usually works ok. There are always some glitches. Beware of that. As for the documentation, I believe Diego (the original author of Babel and LanguageEditor) has something in Spanish.
Pdt: I was reading a Book on Squeak and OLPC in the last etoys image, but seems incomplete. This is an ongoing work or the writing its already done, somewhere?
What is the "Book"? The Demon Castle tutorial? If so, there are (now broken) sequels available at: http://tinlizzie.org/olpc/tutorial/
-- Yoshiki
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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David T. Lewis -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr -
Michael Rueger -
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas -
Yoshiki Ohshima