Κάτι τέτοιο συνέβει με το έργο μου, τον πλανήτη ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ, http://planet.ellak.gr. Ξεκίνησα τον πλανήτη ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ το 2004 και τον φιλοξένησα στην αρχή στην τοποθεσία http://planet.hellug.gr (είχα ζητήσει φιλοξενία από το σύλλογο Hellug). Στις αρχές του 2007 αποφάσισα να μεταφέρω τον πλανήτη ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ στην τοποθεσία planet.ellak.gr, ύστερα από διαφωνία με το σύλλογο Hellug. Καταγράφω τη δική μου οπτική γωνία για το τι συνέβει στο άρθρο Ιστορία από το 2006. Ο χωρισμός από το Hellug δεν ήταν ο καλύτερος, και αυτό που έκανε ο σύλλογος ήταν να εξακολουθεί να χρησιμοποιεί την τοποθεσία planet.hellug.gr ως γενικό πλανήτη ιστολογίων, χωρίς καν να ενημερώσει τους επισκέπτες. Από μετέπειτα συζήτηση διαπίστωσα ότι ο σύλλογος Hellug θεωρούσε ότι το έργο στην τοποθεσία planet.hellug.gr ήταν όλο δικό του. Ωστόσο αυτό που έκανε ο σύλλογος Hellug ήταν να οικειοποιηθεί το έργο ενός εθελοντή. Μεταξύ των ατόμων που ήταν στο σύλλογο Hellug εκείνη την περίοδο ήταν και ο Νίκος Ρούσσος, όπου αν δεν κάνω λάθος ανέλαβε και διαχειριστής στο planet.hellug.gr.

ετοιμόρροπο κτίριο

Από το 2007 τα planet.ellak.gr και planet.hellug.gr έχουν αλλάξει, και υπάρχουν διαφορετικά ιστολόγια στο ένα και στο άλλο.

Τα τελευταία 2-3 χρόνια είχα σποραδική επικοινωνία με το Νίκο Ρούσσο όπου αντιπροσώπευε την Εταιρία ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ (στα γράμματα υπήρχε και cc: με τον κ. Καρούνο, πρόεδρο της ΕΕΛΛΑΚ). Ο στόχος της επικοινωνίας ήταν να υπάρξει ένας κοινός πλανήτης για ελεύθερο λογισμικό στην Ελλάδα.

Η θέση του Νίκου ήταν να εξακολουθήσουν να υπάρχουν ανεξάρτητα τα planet.ellak.gr και planet.hellug.gr, που ωστόσο θα έχουν το υπερσύνολο των ιστολογίων.

Η δική μου θέση είναι να υπάρξει ο πλανήτης ελεύθερου λογισμικού στην τοποθεσία planet.ellak.gr. Για το planet.hellug.gr δεν υπάρχει νόημα να συνεχίσει να φιλοξενεί τα ίδια ιστολόγια με το planet.ellak.gr, και είναι καλή ευκαιρία να φιλοξενεί τα ιστολόγια ατόμων που σχετίζονται με το σύλλογο Hellug. Το planet.hellug.gr δεν αντιπροσωπεύει όλη την κοινότητα ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ στην Ελλάδα. Διαφορετικά, το planet.hellug.gr μπορεί να βάλει ένα redirect όπου να κατευθύνει προς το planet.ellak.gr, ώστε αυτός να αποτελεί το σύνδεσμο που θα γνωρίζουν οι χρήστες. Με το redirect, ο σύνδεσμος στην τοποθεσία του περιηγητή θα φαίνεται πάντα να είναι το planet.ellak.gr.

Και αυτό που συνέβει τώρα ήταν ο Νίκος Ρούσσος

• αφαίρεσε την πρόσβαση που είχα μέσω SSH στο planet.ellak.gr
• έκανε αλλαγές στο planet.ellak.gr δίχως να λάβει την έγκρισή μου

Αυτό που πιστεύω είναι ότι ο Νίκος Ρούσσος έχει πρόβλημα στο θέμα της επικοινωνίας με την κοινότητα. Δεν είναι σε θέση να ξεχωρίσει τις υποχρεώσεις του ως εργαζόμενος στην ΕΕΛΛΑΚ (όπου πρέπει να ακολουθεί το καταστατικό της μη-κερδοσκοπικής εταιρίας) και ως μέλος στον hellug.

Με θλίβει η συμπεριφορά της Εταιρίας ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ. Δεν πιστεύω ότι τέτοιες ενέργειες βοηθούν στο «community building» στο ελεύθερο λογισμικό στην Ελλάδα.

Related posts:

1. Επέτειος, 1ος χρόνος λειτουργίας του Πλανήτη ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ Ελλάδα-Κύπρος!
2. Έξι και ½ χρόνια πλανήτης ελ/λακ
3. Μεταφορά του Πλανήτη ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ στο planet.ellak.gr!

7 comments

It appears that Google is about to extend this feature to the rest of the world. The following are screenshots taking this morning which show that the functionality is gradually being extended to the rest of the world.

First of all, log in to your GMail account.

Make call right from GMail

If it works for you, you are greeted with the above hint about making calls. By clicking on Try it now, you activate the new feature.

Google Voice details

You need to accept the above. The rates are quite competitive, and there is comparison with some other VOIP provider, most probably Skype. Google Voice does not have a connection fee for the calls (unlike Skype, which does have a connection fee).

Then, you install an addon so that you can make phone calls. See http://www.google.com/intl/en/chat/voice/ I have been testing this on Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit) and I installed the appropriate package.

Google Voice call phone option

Once you activate the service, you now have the option to Call phone from the Instant Messenger (IM) app of your GMail.

Google Voice about to make a phone call

At the moment I get the message that I cannot add credit to my account, so I am lucky enough to have some left-over credit from I-do-not-remember-from-where.

Google Voice making a call

Now we are making a phone call to a landline in Greece. It shows the cost, $0.2/min.

My credit in this account is in US Dollars, and somehow I cannot top up using Google Checkout because “Google Voice is not available in your country”. However, in an other account, with no existing credit, I get the option to top up with Google Checkout, in British pounds.

There are reports that users can get a +phonenumber@sip.voice.google.com SIP address. I believe that eventually users will be able to access their Google Voice accounts using SIP, so that they can use their preferred VOIP client software. At the moment it may or may not work for you. My attempts to call using Empathy, Jitsi, SFLPhone were currently unsuccessful.

Having the ability to call landlines and mobiles from Google Voice (within GMail) is big. Google did not market yet well enough the Google Voice PC to PC features in GMail. Now, with Google Voice to landlines and mobiles, Google has a complete offering for VOIP that can attack Skype at their core business. The VOIP business is changing rapidly.

Update

Here is the Google announcement for Google Voice all over the world, http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/calling-from-gmail-now-in-38-languages.html

Related posts:

1. Features for the killer VoIP app
2. Migrate from Hotmail to GMail
3. Microsoft Windows tax refund, from Dell

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Efstathios Iosifidis came in to fill this marketing void. He is currently an active member of the Greek OpenSUSE team and helps with GNOME.

Among the first tasks was to apply for an allocation of GNOME 3 LiveDVDs, from the set of 10.000 disks that OpenSUSE donated to the GNOME Foundation. Vincent Untz has been extremely helpful and sent Efstathios four packs (400 DVD disks) and also about a dozen of GNOME t-shirts.

The first event we participated as Greek GNOME Community was FOSSCOMM, an annual two-day FOSS conference for the Greek free and open-source communities. About 450 people attended, and we had both a presentation and a booth.

Click image for Greek GNOME Presentation slides (PDF, 4.2MB)

The presentation was about the efforts of the Greek localisation team, and the introduction of GNOME 3.

Efstathios at the Greek GNOME Booth at FOSSCOMM 2011 conference

At this point we did not receive yet our allocation of the LiveDVDs, but Efstathios arranged with an OpenSUSE guest speaker (from Switzerland?) to bring GNOME material for the booth.

Greek GNOME community promotion leaflet (2x2)

Our leaflet.

GNOME Buttons, homemade

These are locally made GNOME buttons. Apparently there is a tool to make these quite easily.

The next conference was the EL/LAK ("FOSS" in Greek) conference, which is an annual conference that has been running for almost ten years. There were several invited speakers, including Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation (which produces LibreOffice) and Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian Project Leader).

The conference takes place in four cities in Greece over three days. We managed to represent GNOME in two cities.

Tom Tryfonidis and Kostas Koudaras (in charge of booth) at the booth at Larisa

GNOME booth at Larisa

GNOME booth at Salonica

Efstathios and Tom are also working on the Greek GNOME community website. Apart from the social networking features, we are trying to add more content to the website, including easy programming tutorials.

Related posts:

1. guadec, gsoc l10n-el, ellak-conf
2. 20th Anniversary of Linux T-shirt Design Finalists – Vote now!
3. GUADEC Day #1

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The Linux Foundation, with Linux.com, are running a contest for a t-shirt design. The t-shirt will be used to commemorate the 20 years of Linux in our lives.

The Linux kernel can be found anywhere, on servers, mobile phones (such as Android), TVs (from Samsung, LG, Sony, Toshiba, Philips and many more), ADSL routers, Top500 supercomputers (over 90%).

It is because the Linux kernel is copyleft, if distribute work based on the Linux kernel, you need to make available those source code changes. Being copyleft, the Linux kernel is a single huge project that still stands as one. And allows everyone to work on it and innovate (see the Android CyanogenMod, Samsung SamyGo and LG LG-Open links above).

Linux. Everywhere.

One of the finalists in this competition is George Boukeas, with the above entry “Linux. Everywhere.”

George is a member of the Ubuntu-gr community, and also contributed to GNOME.gr by working on the translation of Inkscape into Greek.

In any case, when it comes to voting, vote what you believe is best. Click to vote for the 20th Anniversary of Linux T-Shift Design Competition.

Related posts:

1. Droid fonts from Google (Android SDK)
2. Στα περίπτερα το ελληνικό περιοδικό Linux Inside, τεύχος 1.
3. Pre-installed Windows and competition in the European Union

No comment

Let's dig some numbers for Europe.

StatCounter statistics for the use of Linux in Europe

According to StatCounter, in Europe about 1.15% of the Internet users use GNU/Linux.

According to the Internet World Stats, in 2010 there are about 475 million Internet users in Europe.

Therefore, the Linux users in Europe (EU) amount to 1.15% of 475 million = about 5.2 million Linux users.

Let's assume that 5 million of these Linux users in the EU ended-up buying a computer pre-installed with unneeded Windows software (Windows XP, Vista or 7, and maybe Microsoft Works). In addition, let's assume that the cost of the unneeded software is €50, which is a heavily conservative value since the unsubsidized price for Windows Home Premium 7 is about €70 (ex. tax). These figures bring the minimum cost that the 1.15% of EU consumers probably paid without any need to 5 million users * €50 / user = €250 million and most probably much higher.

What can we do about this?

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure and the French speaking Libre Software Users' Association started an initiative, “Share your operating system bundling tales with the EU”, where consumers can report competition problems that affect them.

Here is the press release,

My choice is Debian GNU/Linux, explains FFII Vice president René Mages. Why have I been compelled to pay and erase Windows 7 at purchase time?

The European Commission admits it was aware of the difficulties encountered by consumers who want to purchase a PC with a non-Microsoft operating system or without any operating system at all. But they also say they lack evidence suggesting that this is the result of practices in violation of EU competition rules.

We want to crowd source the collection of evidence, says AFUL's President Laurent Séguin. If the EU finds anticompetitive agreements that foreclose competition or abuse a dominant position on the relevant market, that would be a magic bullet.

So, what we can do is visit the European Commission Competition website and report our experiences in buying computers while being forced to get pre-installed Windows although we do not need it.

Let's look at the form,    DISCLAIMER: These are my personal views on how the form could be filled in. If there is a mistake/ommission, please write in the comments and I'll correct.

Fill in your details

Here just fill in your details. You can also select the appropriate language at the top-right drop-down menu.

About which undertaking or group do you wish to inform?

Here you mention that you want to talk about Microsoft, and about one or more computer manufacturers that you where unable to get a computer without pre-installed Windows. It is the lack of choice when buying a new computer. We need choice for the operating system of the computer we plan to buy. For computers, the need of choice for the operating system is critical, as there are viable alternatives such as Linux, which about 5 millions EU citizens already use.

2. To what economic sector is your information related?

This is an easy one, select Information technology (computers, softwares).

What is the matter about which you inform? When did it come to your attention?

1. You can talk about the inability to find a suitable computer for your needs that does not come with pre-installed Windows.You might use another operating system such as GNU Linux or you might already have a Windows license (due to an academic program from your school).
2. If you have a personal experience to share regarding a computer manufacturer and Microsoft software, you can add it here. If you tried to buy a computer without Windows and you had to pay more, or go into great inconvenience, add it here.
3. Add examples that show since when you have been faced with this issue.

4. What result do you hope to achieve?

Here you can say that you want to be able to buy a computer with a choice for the operating system. There are options for alternative operating systems, such as GNU/Linux or even FreeDOS (sort of a token operating system useful if you already have a Windows license).

You can also add that you would like transparency in the agreements between Microsoft and the manufacturers so that when you “build” your desired computer, you can change the operating system as you can change the type of CPU, RAM, or whether you want Bluetooth, 3G and a webcam.

Moreover, you can stress that you want to de-bundle Windows from the computer. You want transparency for the price of the operating system and ability to switch, as you can switch between service providers.

Finally, there is a special relationship between Microsoft and computer manufacturers, where the manufacturers end up promoting Windows software from their websites and advertising material, in order to receive discounts from Microsoft. This special relationship between Microsoft and the manufacturers is unfair, limits choice and hurts competition. It does not provide a level playing field to other operating systems, and the EU consumer is the victim. You would like the European Commision to investigate these agreements between Microsoft and the computer manufacturers.

Have you already contacted the Directorate-General for Competition or other national competition authorities or national regulators in order to obtain assistance?

Here specify whether you already contacted the EU or national bodies for this competition issue.

Supporting documents

You can select whether you want the information that you provide to pass to another competition authority if this one is not entitled to deal with it. Apparently this is the competition authority for the bundling problem of Windows, therefore it is up to your discretion if you feel to say no.

If you have supporting documents, such as emails or letters that show the efforts you went through to find a computer without pre-installed Windows, you can add them here. If there are several documents, you can simply ZIP them into one.

Related posts:

1. Laptop without Windows, an update for Dell, Asus, Acer, Compaq
2. Microsoft Windows tax refund, from Dell
3. 20th Anniversary of Linux T-shirt Design Finalists – Vote now!

One comment

We describe here how to manually generate PDF files from translated documentation.

The relevant gnome-doc-utils files for documentation generation is at http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-doc-utils/tree/tools. As far as I understand from reading the makefile, there is no support yet to build PDFs out of localised documentation.

Let's assume we want to generate PDF documentation for the GNOME 2 User Guide, for the Greek language.

1. We clone the relevant repository

$ git clone git://git.gnome.org/gnome-user-docs

2. Then,

cd gnome-user-docs/gnome2-user-guide/

and now generate the equivalent XML files found in C/ with the localisation for the Greek language (found in el/),

\ls C/*.xml | perl -n -e 'chop; $a=$_; print "xml2po -p el/el.po $a > el/`basename $a`\n"' | sh

3. Let's see what we created,

$ ls el/
el.po    glossary.xml  goscustdesk.xml     
gosfeedback.xml  gosoverview.xml  gosstartsession.xml 
legal.xml  figures  gosbasic.xml  goseditmainmenu.xml 
gosnautilus.xml  gospanel.xml     gostools.xml        
user-guide.xml
$ _

The main file is user-guide.xml, which references the rest of the XML files.

4. One additional step I like to do is convert all those individual .xml in a single big XML file just before performing the conversion to PDF. This helps to figure out any markup mistakes that could have been caused during the translation.

cd el/

xmllint --noent user-guide.xml --output documentation-user-guide.xml

This step does not have the desired effect with the XML in the user-guide because the include files are referenced with “<include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="gosbasic.xml"/>” rather than the “&gosbasic;” which "xmllint --noent" appears to like. Other GNOME documentation use the latter style. Lazyweb, any tips so that xmllint can create a single big fat XML file?

4. You may want to manually populate the figures/ directory. That is, copy any C/figures/* files that are not present in your LL/figures/ directory.

5. In order to create PDF files in NON-iso-8859-1, we need to use the xetex backend,

dblatex --backend=xetex --verbose documentation-user-guide.xml

If all go well, you are greeted with a documentation-user-guide.pdf document.

Two things may go wrong here; there is either an invalid construct in the XML file or you have stumbled on a XeTex bug for your language.

For the Greek language there is a known bug and a workaround for XeTex.

Here is the GNOME2 User Guide (PDF) for

1. Greek (bit messy hyphenation due to workaround), and
2. Russian.

I also tried the user-guide with

Chinese: Fails to compile, encoding problem or most probably limitation in XeTeX.

Thai: Compiles just fine but no Thai font is available. How do you add fonts to XeTeX?

Punjabi: Compiles just fine but no Hindi font is available. How do you add fonts to XeTeX?

Related posts:

1. Help make «DocBook XML to PDF» work for Greek
2. Towards a GNOME CLI translation management tool
3. Designing a command-line translation tool for GNOME

2 comments

There is a new guide on how to write Greek and Greek Polytonic in Linux, and in particular using the latest versions of Linux distributions.

https://docs.google.com/View?docID=dccdrjqk_4cqjn9zcj (LATEST VERSION)

The guide shows in detail how to add the Greek keyboard layout to your Linux desktop, and how to write Greek, Greek Polytonic and other Ancient Greek characters.

The guide is also available in both ODT and PDF format. (both files are somewhat obsolete. use google docs URL from above instead)

For a Greek version of the guide, please see http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dccdrjqk_3gx3bq5f9 (does not update as often as the English version)

We attach the HTML version of the guide in this post. The docs.google.com version is the latest, please read that instead.

Related posts:

1. Cannot write Greek Polytonic in Linux
2. Οδηγός πολυτονικού – Write Greek Polytonic
3. Greek Polytonic HOWTO

17 comments

The git clone man page says that you cannot push your commits if you have a shallow clone. Apparently, there is no error message when you actually push your commits, so it is a situation that might bring problems in the repository in the future.

Lacking more details on whether pushing commits from shallow clones is bad for the repository, let's measure if there are any gains when someone opts for shallow clones.

The git repositories for all modules of gnome-2-26 weight 2.6GB while their shallow clones are 2.3GB. There is a difference of less than 300MB.

Comparatively, if it takes 52 minutes to clone all GNOME 2.26 repositories, their shallow clones save 15 minutes.The speed that was reported by git clone was about 1.4MB/s in this experiment.

Cloning is bound by both your bandwidth and your CPU (especially when resolving deltas). It would be interesting to evaluate if there would be benefits (on git.gnome.org load, speed of cloning) by having daily tarballs of anonymous clones of the modules, so that one can download using HTTP and then simply add their account details and update with git pull --rebase.

With the above information, it makes sense to avoid making shallow clones, especially when you intend to push your changes. Instead, one would dedicate at least 2.6GB for the repositories, and keep them.

intltool-manage-vcs was used to retrieve the repositories.

Update: The GNOME 2.26 modules (2.6GB in size for all their repositories), compresses down to 1.6GB (.tar.bz2).

Related posts:

1. Playing with Git
2. Generating multilingual PDF files out of GNOME documentation
3. Towards a GNOME CLI translation management tool

8 comments

In Designing a command-line translation tool for GNOME, I described how a CLI translation management tool would be used to ease the work of a translator with commit access. The discussion was continued with Leonardo's post Parsing damned-lies’ releases.xml.in in the command line.

The stage we are now is that we have a tool (not official GNOME tool, but rather at beta testing phase!) that can manage the repositories for us, so that the checking out and committing can be fairly automated. The source is available at https://github.com/simos/gnome-i18n-manage-vcs/.

We show two working examples.

Let's say we want to update the documentation for gcalctool. We run

$ ./intltool-manage-vcs --language el --release gnome-2-26 \
--username simos --module gcalctool --transtype doc --init
Release  : gnome-2-26
Language : el
    Category: admin-tools
    Category: dev-tools
    Category: dev-platform
    Category: desktop
        Module:              gcalctool, Branch: gnome-2-26

Download completed successfully.

$ _

In the PO/ subdirectory there is a PO file for gcalctool. We update it using our favourite translation tool, and then

$ ./intltool-manage-vcs --language Greek --commit
Sending        el/el.po
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 2475.

$ _

Let's see another example. We want to update the gnome-games documentation. These are several individual PO files, for each of the games.

$ ./intltool-manage-vcs --language el --release gnome-2-26 \
--username simos --module gnome-games --transtype doc --init
Release  : gnome-2-26
Language : el
    Category: admin-tools
    Category: dev-tools
    Category: dev-platform
    Category: desktop
        Module:            gnome-games, Branch: gnome-2-26

Download completed successfully.
$ _

There are several files,

$ ls PO

aisleriot.gnome-2-26.el.po  gnibbles.gnome-2-26.el.po

gnotravex.gnome-2-26.el.po  README

blackjack.gnome-2-26.el.po  gnobots2.gnome-2-26.el.po

gnotski.gnome-2-26.el.po    same-gnome.gnome-2-26.el.po

glchess.gnome-2-26.el.po    gnome-sudoku.gnome-2-26.el.po

gtali.gnome-2-26.el.po      START

glines.gnome-2-26.el.po     gnometris.gnome-2-26.el.po

iagno.gnome-2-26.el.po      gnect.gnome-2-26.el.po

gnomine.gnome-2-26.el.po    mahjongg.gnome-2-26.el.po

$ _

We enter the PO/ subdirectory and we update those files we wish. We can also run scripts on the PO files. For example, all these documentation files contain the same fragment of the FDL license, so we can translate the license once, and then merge automatically to all translations.

Finally,

$ ./intltool-manage-vcs --language Greek --commit
Sending        el/el.po
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 9014.
Sending        el/el.po
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 9015.
Sending        el/el.po
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 9016.
$ _

In the above example, we updated the documentation of three of the games.

Here are tips when using this tool

• There is a --dry-run option that is useful when experimenting or trying for the first time.
• You can filter which group of a release to download, based on category. Existing categories are desktop, admin-tools, dev-tools, dev-platform. Also, on translation type, either documentation or UI (if you do not specify, we get both). On module, by providing the module name.

And the current limitations

• We currently only support SVN. This will change once the repositories move to git.gnome.org, in about two weeks time.
• You need to have at least an initial translation (currently, the script does not svn add files). To be fixed once we move to git.
• We do not currently update ChangeLog files. That's why gnome-games is so cool for these experiments. Due to the git move, we would not need to mess with ChangeLog files.
• We are dependent on the http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-2-26/xml URLs (replace el with your language). These URLs expose the release modules information in a nice XML file. Previously, the information used to exist in an XML file in the repository of damned-lies. Now, the information lies in the mysql database of damned-lies+vertimus, and is exposed through the above type of URL.
• Due to the previous point, we commit to branch or trunk, depending on what is available in the latest release (gnome-2-26). That means, my translation fixes in gnome-games have not made it to trunk (HEAD). This is something that can be fixed with a workaround. It would be actually cool to use this tool to commit to both gnome-2-xx and master at the same time.
• We currently do not deal with figures.

Considering that damned-lies+vertimus will be having commit functionality soon, I think that having more than one option for easy commiting translations is good.

Related posts:

1. Designing a command-line translation tool for GNOME
2. Using SVN for GNOME Translators
3. Generating multilingual PDF files out of GNOME documentation

12 comments

First, the majority of users are broadband users, with a router that protects the inside systems. It is not possible for an outsider to initiate a network connection to a system inside the LAN. If both users that try to communicate have this typical network configuration, then the current tools say something like «You have a symmetric NAT, and at the moment the way to fix this is to either put your computer in the DMZ or enable manually port-forwarding for specific ports.» Ekiga discusses this issue at Ekiga behind a NAT router and directs the affected users (when using the program) to that page. Twinkle (QT-based SIP-phone) shows you a dialog box with the exact ports to enable for port-forwarding on your router.

The issue of a symmetric NAT can be solved in most of the cases by using the UPnP protocol. If the router supports UPnP (most do by default), then the VoIP app can enable the port-forwarding by itself, transparently from the user, and it will just work.

Until recently there was no good UPnP library, which was probably the reason for the lack of support. However, this changed with GUPnP.

The bug report to add (G)UPnP support to Ekiga is Bug 337166 – UPnP for firewall/NAT penetration.

Ekiga already supports STUN and Zeroconf. With UPnP, the vast majority of users would be covered.

The other issue is the difficulty in configuring your third-party VoIP SIP account, that allows you to make inexpensive voice conversations to telephones and mobiles. The reason why it is difficult is because the user has to figure out the SIP server and other configuration details. The terminology is confusing, registrar, domain, etc.

Ekiga has good support in configuring Diamondcard. The user is presented with a Wizard when configuring for the first time Ekiga.

What needs to be done is to put together the details for each provider and maintain a list at ekiga.com. The client would have a copy of the list, and allow on-demand updates. The bug report, Bug 547215 – Ekiga should know all SIP/VoIP providers, allow easy account addition.

Update 11Aug08: Wiki page with PC-to-phone providers and their details.

Related posts:

1. Practical UPnP in Linux
2. FOSDEM ’08, summary and comments
3. Localisation issues in home directory folders (xdg-user-dirs)

12 comments

If you have slides, put them on http://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2008/Slides, alphabetically by title.

GUADEC slides.

Related posts:

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printf(_("Could not find file “%s”n"));

instead of

printf(_("Could not find file "%s"n"));

The general view from the replies is to go ahead and add those nice Unicode characters.

Actually, there are UI messages already with non-ASCII characters (the ellipsis character, …) in GNOME 2.22:

1. glade3
2. epiphany

In GNOME 2.24, there are even more (with ellipsis):

1. gucharmap
2. epiphany
3. gnome-terminal
4. gedit
5. glade3

Regarding the fancy Unicode double quotes, there are UI strings in GNOME 2.22 (same list for 2.24) in the following packages:

1. evince
2. cheese
3. epiphany
4. eog
5. gnome-doc-utils

What are the arguments against having non-ASCII characters in UI strings?

1. There might be systems that still use 8-bit legacy encodings. In this case, the UTF-8 encoded may not be displayed properly. However, when I tried to demonstrate this on my system (Ubuntu 8.04), I failed miserably. I downloaded a small GTK2 text editor (called tea), I changed a source UI string to include “” and ellipsis, compiled and installed. I then opened a shell, set LANG to POSIX (or C), and ran the text editor. The UI message was proper Unicode and I could even type non-ASCII in the text editor. I resorted to changing a system locale (I picked en_IN) to ISO-8859-1, then logged out. In the login screen it did not show the 8-bit encoding. If someone has a proper legacy 8-bit encoding system with GNOME (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc), could you please try it out?
2. As Alan Cox mentioned in the thread, the canonical way to deal with UI strings in the source code should be to keep as ASCII, and put any fancy Unicode characters in the translation files (even for en_US, get an en_US translation file).

Is GNOME (or components) used in a legacy 7-bit/8-bit environment?

If there is any reason to keep UI strings in the source code as plain ASCII, speak now, or the Unicode flood gates are about to open.

Update 16 May 2008:There is a document at the ISO/IEC 9899 website (C programming language), that mentions the issue of character sets in C. It is http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/C99RationaleV5.10.pdf.

On page 26, section 5.2.1, it says

The C89 Committee ultimately came to remarkable unanimity on the subject of character set requirements. There was strong sentiment that C should not be tied to ASCII, despite its heritage and despite the precedent of Ada being defined in terms of ASCII. Rather, an implementation is required to provide a unique character code for each of the printable graphics used by C, and for each of the control codes representable by an escape sequence. (No particular graphic representation for any character is prescribed; thus the common Japanese practice of using the glyph “¥” for the C character “” is perfectly legitimate.) Translation and execution environments may have different character sets, but each must meet this requirement in its own way. The goal is to ensure that a conforming implementation can translate a C translator written in C.

For this reason, and for economy of description, source code is described as if it undergoes the same translation as text that is input by the standard library I/O routines: each line is terminated by some newline character regardless of its external representation.

With the concept of multibyte characters, “native” characters could be used in string literals and character constants, but this use was very dependent on the implementation and did not usually work in heterogenous environments. Also, this did not encompass identifiers.

It then goes on with an addition to C99:

A new feature of C99: C99 adds the concept of universal character name (UCN) (see §6.4.3) in order to allow the use of any character in a C source, not just English characters. The primary goal of the Committee was to enable the use of any “native” character in identifiers, string literals and character constants, while retaining the portability objective of C.

Both the C and C++ committees studied this situation, and the adopted solution was to introduce a new notation for UCNs. Its general forms are unnnn and Unnnnnnnn, to designate a given character according to its short name as described by ISO/IEC 10646. Thus, unnnn can be used to designate a Unicode character. This way, programs that must be fully portable may use virtually any character from any script used in the world and still be portable, provided of course that if it prints the character, the execution character set has representation for it.

Of course the notation unnnn, like trigraphs, is not very easy to use in everyday programming; so there is a mapping that links UCN and multibyte characters to enable source programs to stay readable by users while maintaining portability. Given the current state of multibyte encodings,
10 this mapping is specified to be implementation-defined; but an implementation can provide the users with utility programs that do the conversion from UCNs to “native” multibytes or vice versa, thus providing a way to exchange source files between implementations using the UCN notation.

Update 7 Aug 2008: According to PEP 8, Style Guide for Python Code, under Encodings, says

    For Python 3.0 and beyond, the following policy is prescribed for
    the standard library (see PEP 3131): All identifiers in the Python
    standard library MUST use ASCII-only identifiers, and SHOULD use
    English words wherever feasible (in many cases, abbreviations and
    technical terms are used which aren't English). In addition,
    string literals and comments must also be in ASCII. The only
    exceptions are (a) test cases testing the non-ASCII features, and
    (b) names of authors. Authors whose names are not based on the
    latin alphabet MUST provide a latin transliteration of their
    names.

    Open source projects with a global audience are encouraged to
    adopt a similar policy.

(Emphasis mine)

Related posts:

1. Improving input method support in GTK+-based apps
2. How to write special characters in Xorg and GNOME
3. Οδηγός “Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems”

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