[PD] What about multilingual Pd ?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, derek holzer wrote:

> This is quite far from what I advocate, and in fact the exact opposite.
> Shouldn't a software, free or not, be usable whether the user is a
> developer or not?

How do you define "usable" ?

> What I have found from teaching PD to artists over the last three years
> is that the merging of the user and the developer communities in this
> particular case of Free Software often leaves the developers and the
> "power-users" as a kind of "hacker elite".

This is pretty much unavoidable to some extent. At least the barrier is 
made only by knowledge and not by money...

> New users, or casual users who do not actively follow the development of
> the software, have no idea where to start or to find additional material
> (tutorials, externals, examples, etc).

That's not a problem with the software itself (I mostly try to take care
of the software itself because if I don't do it who will?). Do they know
about the Pd portal? are there Pd portals other than the main one that do
take care of the educational aspects better than puredata.org ?

> This is a barrier to more widespread use of the software among
> (non-programmer) artists. Or do we ONLY want users who are also
> developers?

Depends... ideally I'd want the user-developer distinction to be blurred 
such that it becomes a continuum with a steady ramp up. (Well, that's 
every teacher's dream, too.)

> In Brazil, for example, not everyone has sufficient knowledge of English
> to dig into the docs or contact the development community. In Brazil,
> there is a huge popular movement towards Free Software in general,

Then what are you guys/gals waiting for? We have six languages for phase 1
already. That's a first test. I'll come up with a second phase of
translation this week, which will cover more ground.

> There are groups of people translating core softwares, but largely this
> movement happens in cultural centers on the periphery of the cities, and
> it all happens in Portuguese.

So who's doing the translation then? And what language do they want to 
translate from, if they don't speak English?

> Do we expect them to pay for MAX/MSP because they don't speak any other
> language than Portuguese, and therefore can't get involved in
> development? ;-)

Surely there are *some* people who can do some translation, right? If not, 
then I can't do anything. There has to be some kind of English-Português 
link in some way, be it them, or you, or Nuno.

In any case, I don't see what I'm supposed to be doing with that, how you 
are going to get Pd to Brasil without any translators and trying hard to 
avoid creating interest about translation by hiding the fact that it's 
possible to have Pd in Português.

> I'm sorry to be a stick in the mud about this translation thing. I guess
> the main difference I have is a user-centered perspective, rather then a
> developer-centered one.

WTF does "user-centered perspective" mean and how does that bring any
solutions (or potential avenues for them) instead of just outlining
existing problems?

> At any rate, I totally support anything that makes PD more usable [...]
> That includes proper documentation as well as localized interfaces.

If that's not lip-service, then how do you really *support* localization
given that you want to hide the localization effort from people who may
want (and be able) to contribute just because "not everyone" can do it?

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