PmWiki | Main / Latin-vaButAnyoneForKhmer

(:nl:)'''EDITORIAL - Latin-Va, but anyone for Khmer?'''

''' 'L10N' or localization is also an act of citizenship'''

Hard to believe but in version 2.0.3 of OpenOffice.org released just two days ago (this page was written in 2006), you can now choose Latin-va as a 'locale', meaning that it includes a file which enables specific settings to come into play for Latin 'as she is spoke' in Vatican City. You can write in Latin if that is your bent. You can even use a Latin spell-checker! Now before anyone begins to question my san(ct)itas - let the spell-checker make that choice - let me tell you that this has nothing to do with Benedict XVI who actually speaks quite fluent Latin and would want it to have its place. Instead, it is a tiny indication of a principle that F/OSS is working at assiduously around the world, and which has quite important implications for people like us who, to borrow from Fr Vecchi's ideas a good few years ago, educate to and create opportunities for active citizenship. And he wrote that in the context of his letter on Social Communication AGC 370.

G11N, I18N L10N are three standards which F/OSS is working at worldwide to ensure that ordinary people have their opportunity for development by one of the key elements in development today - Information Technology or IT. G11N is shorthand for globalization (11 letters between G-N) - and the other two are internationalization and localization. You can work those out. In the IT world they refer to doing whatever one has to do to ensure that everyone has access. I think it is worth taking a look at Asia in this regard, because it is the world's battlefield as far as F/OSS versus proprietary software is concerned. It is that part of the world where the digital divide is most noticeable, where 'piracy' is at its highest and where the great proprietary interests have not established a hold. One localization standard is represented by a simple little 'locale' file of the Latin-va kind. Just that tiny item tells a tale. Let's look at Khmer.

'Locale' = cultural conventions like settings affecting time, date, currency, keyboard... Mongolian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Bangla (as in Bangladesh) all have a 'locale' in a range of software, which has implications for interface, keyboard, fonts and so on. Effectively, along with a few other things, it means that people in countries where those languages are the major languages, do NOT have to learn English in order to learn to use a computer, spend less time in training because of it, have more access to development, are able to communicate with more people via email, to name just a few advantages. But at least until very recently (my information is a year old) Khmer, Pashto (Afghanistan), Lao and Tibetan do not have a 'locale' which probably means they are behind in local keyboards, standardised Unicode encoding and so forth. The issue is more than just fonts. There is a standardised Unicode system in place now for Khmer, as you will note if you go into parts of the Salesian site for Cambodia.

Most large metropolis dailies use RSS - you look for a little orange, occasionally blue icon somewhere on their homepage, or....but I'll come back to the 'or' in a moment. Not only Dailies. I keep up with professional reading in Theology, Linguistics, IT, areas that interest me most, with RSS. In a matter of seconds I am informed in those areas - and I do not need to do anything myself. The information comes to me automatically.

Now let's be clear - RSS(XML) doesn't have to be F/OSS! There are a lot of proprietary RSS Readers around. You actually don't need any of them. There are free ones too, open source ones for that matter.

But if you are already using Firefox, then you have the best of both worlds. Now for the 'or'. No need to go scrolling around anyone's homepage looking for little orange blobs - Firefox automatically detects RSS on a page. Let me demonstrate it: Go to www.bosconet.aust.com in your Firefox browser (it won't work this way for IE). You will see a little orangy thing in the address bar at the top. Right click on that and it will ask you if you wish to save this in Bookmarks or on the Bookmark toolbar - choose the latter. Voila. Whenever you click on that now on the toolbar, all of austraLasia's updated news headlines are available - a click takes you to the full item.

Using that system, as I do, you no longer waste time hunting around for updated information in areas of interest. You only need to go to the desired site once and add its 'orange blob' to your toolbar. Done.

'''FOSS PRINCIPLES'''

F/OSS and Development

Let's go back to the topic raised in the editorial, because it implies some possible roles for F/OSS in development, and we members of the Salesian Family are deeply involved in the world's developing nations.

Developing nations are now no longer asking the question as to possible economic advantages of using F/OSS. What they are now asking (because the answer is obvious) is the projects and policies to take full advantage of it.

This is where support from international and regional organisations comes in - SDB and FMA are international organisations and we operate under various names according to circumstances; think of our Mission and Volunteer organisations, to begin with. We have a role to play in 'digital inclusion' in developing countries. In Salesian history, there have been famous names who have played important roles in so-cllaed mission lands - think of the great linguists and anthropologists who have worked in Latin America and India. Today's challenge goes one step further - not only language, but in a digital world, even the simple 'locale' file which lets tiny little places (Vatican City size!) have their differences represented - the way they write dates, or measurements for example. You don't need programmers to write these files. They are relatively simple and 'open' for all to see - try Googling up how to write a 'locale' file for, say, OpenOffice.

FOSS EXPERIENCES

So far people are not using the wiki, but writing to me. That's fine! It probably takes people quite some time to get used to a new way of doing things. However, why not try the wiki? That way, not only I get to see the ideas, but anyone else who reads F/OSSERVATORE too. The 'experience' this week is offered by a reader in Zambia. It is really quite simple. He, along with many others in Africa, requested a CD which contained a variety of material from a recent meeting AND lots of FOSS software. The CD was actually sent out in English, French, Portuguese to cover the 'lingua francas' of the African region. It could have included localized versions of some items - Swahili OpenOffice for isntance, but they can get that from a University department in Kenya or Tanzania where that language is common.

Anyway, the reader lets us know that he has now installed that software as an alternative on communtiy computers, and intends to run a workshop with the local FMA communities explaining this CD and of course making a copy of it for them which is entirely legal.

Responses have come from other parts of Africa where the CD has been received and is now in use.

It is a simple enough experience, but with very little effort and virtually no cost, some groups of people in a dozen different African nations are now empowered in a new way. (:nl:)