Say No to OOXML
Click on the image above to visit the petition page.
I copy here the terms of the petition to say no on the standardisation of MSOOXML at ISO.
I ask the national members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS 29500 (Office OpenXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:
- There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens;
- There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;
- There is missing information from the specification document, for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
- More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do not validate as XML;
- There is no guarantee that anybody can write a software that fully or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to patent damages or patent license fees by Microsoft;
- This standard proposal conflicts with other ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic hash);
- There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids to enter any date before the year 1900: such bugs affects the OOXML specification as well as software versions such as Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 or 2007.
- This standard proposal has not been created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone.
This project is an initiative by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), the non-profit that helped achieve the rejection of the EU software patent directive in July 2005.
Update #1: Currently (26Jun07 - noon) there are 8805 signatures.
Update #2: Currently (26Jun07 - evening) there are 9481 signatures.
Update #3:
IT IS URGENT THAT YOU CONTACT YOUR STANDARDISATION BODY IN YOUR COUNTRY AND EXPLAIN THEM WHY OOXML IS BROKEN; SENDING A NICE LETTER TO YOUR STANDARDISATION BODY IN YOUR COUNTRY IS MORE IMPORTANT THEN SIGNING THE PETITION
OpenVistA information system for hospitals and medical care
It is quite common to expect the availability of free and open-source software for common needs, such as an operating system and an office suite. What is the situation when your needs are much more advanced? Such as, when you are looking for an information system for a hospital?
Luckily, there is such a software package for an information system for hospital needs, called OpenVistA. OpenVistA comes from VistA, a public-funded medical system for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Due to the source of the funding, the source code of the medical system has been available with a liberal license, and gave birth to OpenVistA.
An interesting issue with OpenVistA is that the backend is written with the MUMPS programming language. This programming language is quite old with syntax dissimilar to modern languages. However, MUMPS has become popular in medical care systems and especially VistA. There are people that criticize the programming language; it is important to understand that a big piece of software working well has much more weight over the language preferences. In addition, the front-end is what the end-user uses, and in our case it is written with modern programming languages.

Traditionally, the major front-end of OpenVistA was written in Delphi. Quite recently, a new front-end has been written, in Mono. Thanks to Mono, the front-end is cross-platform and supports i18n (the front-end can be translated in many written languages).
You can try out OpenVistA straight away by downloading the OpenVistA VMWare appliance (image file that contains an installation of an operating system, configured and ready to use). The specific VMWare appliance is based on Xubuntu.
Software for hospitals is quite expensive, and is a lucrative business for software houses. However, when one takes into account that in many countries hospitals are public-funded, it is easy to understand how important it is to use free and open-source software in this case. Sadly, in many cases, hospitals make ad-hoc agreements for such software, resulting to inefficient use of public funds.
Mentoring facility available in Launchpad, Ubuntu
Is there a bug report in Launchpad.net (Ubuntu) that you are confident you can help someone to fix but do not have the time to fix yourself?
Now Launchpad provides the facility for contributors to offer mentoring support to bug reports and blueprints, so that users can apply and receive mentoring. With mentoring you help someone else solve a problem. Ubuntu is benefited, and also the new user gets help in resolving bugs.
For the Greek language there is an Ubuntu team called Ubuntu Greek Testers. Users interested for the Greek language in Ubuntu can subscribe to team. Then, for any bug report that relates to the Greek language support, we subscribe the team as a member. The system is configured in such a way so that any activity on those bug reports is mailed to each member. This makes it easy to track the status of reports.
You can see the current list of pending reports for the Greek language in Ubuntu.
One of the bug reports is about the Broken context-sensitive spell check in evolution (Greek, Russian, etc) GNOME #344008.
This report has been there for around 2 years and it should be fixed soon. I am not sure what the best course of action should be. Well, the typical course of action would be to compile GNOME manually (jhbuild), locate the code in Evolution that deals with gnome-spell and put printf()s that show what's going on when this part of the code is reached. Any takers?
Update: Just offered mentorship for https://bugs.launchpad.net/evolution/+bug/10713
I understand the direction to work on but do not know what exactly is going on.
Firefox shortcuts in Linux on non-us keyboard layout, and Greek
You tried to use the common keyboard shortcuts in the Linux version of Firefox, with a keyboard layout other than us, and you realised they do not work. For example, Ctrl-C does not work when the Greek keyboard layout is active because Firefox receives Ctrl-Ψ (which is undefined).
This is a well-known problem affecting keyboard shortcuts in many languages.
How can someone solve the problem; Should Firefox for Linux be configured so that internally it would consider Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Ψ correspond to the same keyboard shortcut (perhaps in the language pack)? Well, the problem is that one would prefer a solution that is independent of the keyboard layout. You might be running a Greek localisation of Firefox with an active layout for Hindi.
The optimal solution is to have Firefox associate the keyboard shortcuts to physical keys (whatever that means) instead of the characters they are producing. Bug #69230/Mozilla has been there for quite some time although an acceptable solution is available in both GTK+ (GNOME) and OpenOffice.org. For example, in a GNOME application, both Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Ψ are equivalent.
So, what can we do now with the Linux versions of Firefox? Well, it is possible to write a Firefox extension that would intercept keys being pressed in a local layout and convert to the standard keyboard shortcuts Firefox likes.
Such a workaround is available for the Greek language, written by Athanasios Lefteris, at Mozilla και συντομεύσεις πληκτρολογίου σε Linux.
Currently the extension exists in the sandbox of the Mozilla add-ons, meaning that you are required to register (free) and also configure your profile to allow the view of sandboxed extensions (=in early stage of development, about to get accepted). It is desired to to try out the extension and write a short review. This will help to get the extension accepted as official add-on to the masses.
Many thanks to Athanasios!
p.s.
There is an existing Russian version of the extension. It is expected that other languages will follow.
Using SVN for GNOME Translators
Update 3rd June 2009: This is a very old post when GNOME was using SVN for the VCS (now we use git). My blog theme does not show the year, so I am writing this in case you are confused by the post.
Now GNOME uses SVN to manage the development of the software.
To use SVN, the basic relevant commands are described at Getting the most out of Subversion in GNOME.
If you are a translator, the work is further simplified. You would normally new SVN to get a copy of the source code of a package so that you can extract the translation messages of the UI or the documentation. In addition, in some cases you can provide localised images and screenshots.
First of all, if you do not have an account on SVN yet, you need to connect using Anonymous access. You still have all access, however if you want to upload any translations would need to give them to someone else who has such an SVN account.
Furthermore, the source code of a package is often branched during a GNOME release so that when there is ongoing development, the released version of the package is not affected. Branches usually have a name similar to gnome-2-18. The not-branched branch is called trunk (or HEAD, in CVS lingo), where all cutting-edge development usually happens.
To checkout (here checkout means to obtain a copy) the source code of a package.
Checkout trunk as anonymous
svn checkout http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gnome-utils/trunk my-trunk-gnome-utils
Checkout trunk as simos
svn checkout svn+ssh://simos@svn.gnome.org/svn/gnome-utils/trunk my-trunk-gnome-utils
Checkout branch called "gnome-2-18" as anonymous
svn checkout http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gnome-utils/branches/gnome-2-18/ gnome-utils-stable
Checkout branch called "gnome-2-18" as simos
svn checkout svn+ssh://simos@svn.gnome.org/svn/gnome-utils/branches/gnome-2-18 gnome-utils-stable
To commit you changes means that you send your changes upstream to the project.
In order to commit, you enter the directory you checked out and you run
svn commit -m "Updated Greek translation"
The changes you make typically include updated your language's LL.po file, and also updating the ChangeLog file.
You cannot commit in a anonymous checkout. The system knows that it's you when you are commiting because the checkout command saved the username you used earlier.
In the SVN commands, you can abbreviate checkout with co, and commit with ci. Sometimes this leads to the most common newbie error; you tend to think that co is for commit. In practice you cannot make a mess though, as the command line parameters between the two actions are very different, and the command will fail.
Νέες προθεσμίες για τη μετάφραση του GNOME 2.18(.1)
Κατά το http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen η προθεσμία για την υποβολή μεταφράσεων για το GNOME 2.18 έχει περάσει.
Τώρα επικεντρώνουμε την προσοχή μας στο GNOME 2.18.1 που θα γίνει διαθέσιμο στις αρχές Απριλίου. Θα προσπαθήσουμε να τελειώσουμε τη δουλειά νωρίτερα από τις αρχές Απριλίου.
Έχω την εντύπωση ότι οι διανομές Fedora και Ubuntu θα πάρουν από το 2.18.1.
Έτσι, για να έχουμε ολοκληρωμένο τον εξελληνισμό των διανομών Fedora και Ubuntu (+ΟpenSuse;, κτλ), βοηθούμε στη μετάφραση του GNOME. Είναι δε σημαντικό να μεταφραστεί και να διορθωθεί το GNOME διότι αυτό είναι που βλέπει ο τελικός χρήστης στην καθημερινή χρήση.
Από το http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/el/gnome-2-18 μεταφράζουμε από τη δεξιά στήλη.
Για να είμαστε σίγουροι ότι κάποιος άλλος δεν μεταφράζει το ίδιο
πρόγραμμα, το καταγράφουμε στη σελίδα
http://www.ubuntu-gr.org/Wiki/Community/Translation/Upstream/POReservation
Για τη μετάφραση μπορούμε να χρησιμοποιήσουμε KBabel (sudo apt-get
install kbabel). Για την ενεργοποίηση της ελληνικής ορθογραφίας δείτε
πρόσφατο γράμμα στη λίστα ubuntu-gr.
Το τελικό αρχείο μπορείτε να το στείλετε στο team ατ gnome τελεία gr.
Για περισσότερες τεχνικές πληροφορίες στη μετάφραση, δείτε και το γράμμα του Αθανάσιου Λευτέρη.
Αν χρησιμοποιείτε τη διανομή Fedora και ελληνικά, τότε είναι καλό να γραφτείτε στη λίστα συνδρομητών
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-el
Αν χρησιμοποιείτε τη διανομή Ubuntu και ελληνικά, τότε είναι καλό να γραφτείτε στη λίστα συνδρομητών
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-gr
Creating a new locale on the OLPC
When you run the OLPC software you currently have access only to the English locales.
If you want to enable Greek support, you need to run (as root)
localedef -v -c -i /usr/share/i18n/locales/el_GR -f UTF-8 /usr/lib/locale/el_GR/
localedef -v -c -i /usr/share/i18n/locales/el_GR -f UTF-8 /usr/lib/locale/el_GR.utf8/
You will get a bunch of warnings. You can ignore them for now.
The localedef command compiles the source locale information found at /usr/share/i18n/locales/el_GR and places the resulting files at
/usr/lib/locale/el_GR/ and /usr/lib/locale/el_GR.utf8/ (both directories contain the same files, so you can also make a link from one to another). The reason we make two versions is that we can use either el_GR or el_GR.utf8 in the applications. Both use UTF-8 as the base encoding which is always nice.
For other locales, replace el_GR with the locale name of your country.
To activate the Greek locale, you need to create a file /etc/sysconfig/i18n and add the text
LANG=el_GR.utf8
LANGUAGE=el:en
Now you need to place the translated applications (.mo format) into
/usr/share/locale/el/LC_MESSAGES/
and restart your virtual machine (or laptop (hint hint)).
The OLPC and Greek
(oh, I am writing this through a lousy Net connection; thanks Engelados)
I tried out the latest OLPC image, specifically build 218, on Qemu and my aim was to get Greek support configured, if it was not there already.
The OLPC does not currently come with a good set of Greek fonts; you will need to install a set of fonts such as DejaVu or GFS Didot.
Installing means adding the font files in the directory /usr/share/fonts/. The current font configuration files in the OLPC favour Bitstream Vera, therefore you would need to move the bitstream subdirectory outside the fonts directory. DejaVu is based on Bitstream Vera and therefore you will not notice any change once you upgrade. Also, Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu Linux are based on DejaVu. You need DejaVu, as Bitstream Vera does not currently support Greek. Both DejaVu and GFS Didot are free and open-source fonts.
Note: This screenshot shows DejaVu Sans, not GFS Didot. Sorry for the typo.
This is the OLPC running the cut-down version of the Abiword wordprocessor. Click on the image to view the full size.
This is the OLPC showing the same document above with GFS Didot. The font looks quite nice and similar to old greek textbooks. There is a small issue however, it does not have the character coverage of DejaVu. For example, notice that the Euro sign is missing from GFS Didot. Also, other glyphs such as fancy bullet characters are missing as well. Normally, the OLPC software should replace those missing characters with the correct characters from another font. Apparently something is wrong here and needs further investigation.
Writing support for the Greek language has to be configured separately in the OLPC. The case with other languages appears to be that the default layout is that of the language; apparently there is no need to switch between Brazilian Portuguese and English. For the Greek language it appears that it is good to be able to switch between Greek and English.
There are several places that you can add Greek writing support. The most common is in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Having gone through the configuration files, I think that /etc/X11/Xkbmap is also a good place and saves us from touching the core Xorg configuration file.
To write the full set of Greek letters, one needs to set the extended variant for the Greek layout, and also try to set the Compose key (for ano teleia). These things should be simplified...
I am not sure how the OLPC looks like (the only photos I saw where not focusing on the keyboard). Perhaps it would be useful to have a test machine at my disposal (hint, hint).
Jim Gettys wrote at his blog about the different languages that the first generation of the OLPC should support. Both Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili use the latin alphabet, therefore there are no significant issues with font support or writing support.
p.s.
Greece will carry out a pilot with OLPC laptops next September.
Can you read Coptic?

Coptic is the most recent phase of ancient Egyptian. It is the direct descendant of the ancient language written in Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts. The Coptic alphabet is a slightly modified form of the Greek alphabet, with some letters (which vary from dialect to dialect) deriving from demotic. As a living language of daily conversation, Coptic flourished from ca. 200 to 1100. The last record of its being spoken was during the 17th century. Coptic survives today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Egyptian Arabic is the spoken and national language of Egypt today.
Source: Wikipedia on Coptic Language
Coptic, as used today, has signs of influence from the Greek language. If you speak Greek, you should be able to recognise every entry in the screenshot (it comes from the dictionary that is available from http://copticlang.bizhat.com/).
There is a Coptic Unicode block and there are at least three Unicode fonts available with Coptic glyphs.
I am not aware of a keyboard definition to write Unicode Coptic; Coptic uses several combining diacritical marks (accents) and appears to surpass even Ancient Greek/Polytonic in this respect. An easy way to create (easy to write with?) method would be to start from the Greek keyboard layout and replace the codepoints with the Coptic ones. For the 9 combining diacritical marks, three keys should be dedicated, accessible through 1) pressing as is, 2) pressing with shift, 3) pressing with Alt. To avoid using dead keys, there would be a requirement to type first the letter and then the diacritical mark.
In modern Greek we use the ";:" key (on the right of L) to produce the acute and the diaeresis (with Shift) accents. The second suitable key could be the ' " key while the third the "/?" (debateable).
There are several efforts to convert non-Unicode fonts distributed by the Coptic Church. website. Moheb added the Coptic glyphs to the Freefonts. There is more work required to get them added by default to Linux distros. There is a discussion forum on Coptic.
Therefore, the most important task is to create a keyboard layout so that one can write in Unicode Coptic.
Then, existing (non-Unicode) text should be converted to Unicode Coptic so that there is material available. Moheb created support for this in iconv (glibc). There should be a bug report at http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/ under product glibc, component libc.

Source: Wikipedia (Coptic script)
There exist free Unicode fonts already to have the text displayed. The conversion of the Coptic Church fonts to Unicode would be beneficial as well. To have them included in Linux distros, the distribution license should be set to one of the FLOSS licenses. An option could be to add to the DejaVu fonts (allowed by the license) so that there is a general purpose open font that is easy to work with.
I, for one, would love to write Greek using a Coptic keyboard layout and a Coptic Unicode font.
Update: Screenshot that demonstrates how well Unicode Coptic fonts behave when combining marks are used.

Update #2: You can test the above on your system by opening this OpenDocument file using OpenOffice.org or any other OpenDocument-compatible application. OpenOffice.org was verified that it can show combining marks. Your mileage may vary, your comments will be appreciated.
Παρωχημένα πράγματα
παρωχημένος -η -ο [paroiménos] E3 : που ανήκει στο παρελθόν: O ιστορικός μελετά παρωχημένες εποχές. || (γραμμ.) Παρωχημένη λέξη / έκφραση. Παρωχημένη σημασία / χρήση μιας λέξης, που υπήρχε παλαιότερα. || (γραμμ.) ~ χρόνος, συντελεσμένος. [λόγ. < αρχ. παρῳχημένος (γραμμ.: ελνστ. σημ.)]
Πηγή: http://www.komvos.edu.gr/dictionaries/dictonline/DictOnLineTri.htm
Υπάρχει συζήτηση στη λίστα i18ngr για το αν είναι κατάλληλη η λέξη παρωχημένος για τη μετάφραση του όρου deprecated (π.χ. the use of the abort3() system call is deprecated).
Στην Πληροφορική, ο όρος deprecated έχει την έννοια της σταδιακής απόσυρσης ενός χαρακτηριστικού σε λογισμικό. Δηλαδή η λειτουργία είνα διαθέσιμη τώρα, ωστόσο στο μέλλον δεν θα είναι διαθέσιμη πια.
In computer software standards and documentation, deprecation is the gradual phasing-out of a software or programming language feature.
Η λέξη παρωχημένος τείνει να έχει αρνητικό connotation και σε μερικές καταστάσεις έχει χρήση ως βρισιά.
Ποιος είναι ο πιο κατάλληλος όρος για τη μετάφραση του deprecated;
Ubuntu 6.06 (LTS) in Greek

Ubuntu 6.06 (LTS) in Greek
Προέρχεται από τον simosx.
This is Ubuntu 6.06 (LTS), Desktop edition. You can use the installation CD as a LiveCD, and you can initiate the installation once you boot up. Really cool way to make sure that it works before installing.
Here I chose the Greek language while booting the desktop CD. The LiveCD interface has Greek translations!
What's most interesting is that Greek now appear well for the first time in a distribution "by default".
Thanks to the DejaVu fonts which are now available by default in Ubuntu 6.06, Greek users have an amazing experience in Linux.
I noticed that those with a widescreen display see some artefacts in the letters. This appears to be an issue with the settings and I believe it is resolved once you actually install on the hard disk.
Thanks DejaVu for the Greek support!
Ελληνικά σε VoipBuster, VoipStunt, VoipCheap κτλ.
Η εταιρία Betamax GmbH & Co KG είναι πίσω από τις υπηρεσίες Διαδικτυακής Τηλεφωνίας (Internet Telephony) VOIPBuster, VOIPStunt, VOIPCheap, InternetCalls κτλ (υπάρχουν άλλες;).
Κάθε μια από τις παραπάνω υπηρεσίες έχει δικό του πρόγραμμα (για Win μόνο) με το οποίο μπορείτε να κάνετε τηλέφωνα μέσω Διαδικτύου. Αν δείτε καλύτερα, θα παρατηρήσετε ότι κάθε μια από τις υπηρεσίες χρησιμοποιεί το ίδιο βασικό πρόγραμμα που έχει απλά παραμετροποιηθεί.
Από όλες τις υπηρεσίες μόνο στο VOIPBuster υπάρχει φόρουμ στο οποίο χρήστες μπορούν να στείλουν σχόλια και να επικοινωνήσουν μεταξύ τους.
Το λογισμικό στις παραπάνω υπηρεσίες μπορεί να μεταφραστεί σε άλλες γλώσσες. Παρατηρώντας την ενότητα Language Files του φόρουμ του VOIPBuster (απαιτεί λογαριασμό, χρειάζεται να εγκαταστήσετε την εφαρμογή που είναι μόνο σε Win για τη δημιουργία λογαριασμού), υπάρχουν 5 ανεξάρτητες (;) ελληνικές μεταφράσεις.
Θα ήταν καλό να μαζευτούν οι μεταφράσεις σε μια κοινή και γενική μετάφραση.
Ενημέρωση (Ιαν07): Νέα έκδοση της ελληνικής μετάφρασης.


