[PD] What about multilingual Pd ?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, derek holzer wrote:

> Here you have the old chicken/egg syndrome. If the GUI says "Nachricht",
> but the docs say "Message", you have a big problem for a new user, and I
> would argue that is a bigger problem than if the GUI says "Message", the
> docs say "Message", but the user happens to be German.

This is assuming that the software would only display German _or_ English 
and not both.

> The danger I see is that non-English-speaking users will (of course) be
> attracted by reading that PD "supports" French, German, Portuguese,
> whatever. And the initial experience with the GUI will support that, but
> any further attempts to figure out what is really going on will only
> frustrate them

> In practical terms, my suggestion would be to would leave localized GUI
> support in the dev catagory, and not mention it anyplace else until matching
> documentation is supported.

Do you mean: you want to give them an already finished product so that
they can't get to know that they can participate in the translation even
though they might be an ideal workforce for doing so?

Publicity of Pd should not be done like marketing of commercial
off-the-shelf products because the development model of community-based
free/libre/open-source projects such as Pd is based on work-in-progress
and the removal of (most of) the barrier between the users and the
developers.

If some users don't want to have anything to do for the community then
they deserve to pay big bucks so that they can rent a permission to use a
competing piece of software on a limited number of computers.  

People who come to the community demanding a certain level of quality
without even offering to contribute anything, not even money, don't even
deserve to be part of the community. They may use the free software as
much as they wish according to clauses of the BSD and/or the GPL, but they
don't have to bug us about it. I want to avoid being polluted by the kind
of people who think that free software developers are an inferior species
of critters that deserve to be exploited.

Because of all of that, I don't think that we have to either support a
language as in provide everything in that language or not do it at all.  
If someone is really pissed because N % of the doc isn't yet translated in
French or Farsi or Faroëse then the only compensation i'll send them is a
reality chèque signed by Santa Claus himself.

I want people to know that Pd is not a finished/polished product and most
importantly that they can do something about it!! Else I'd rather start a
business building a better Pd with a MAX-style business model and sell the
software back to you at 242,55 Euro plus tax, but it would be a lot easier
to just disappear from the arts scene completely and go work as a
full-time actuarial mathematician in an insurance company.

 _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada