[Sugar-devel] #1686 UNSP: Accessibility - virtual keyboard

[Michael Stone]

> First of all, thanks Esteban for the great work! I hope we can spin a
> new build soon and give it a try. 

Thanks, that would indeed be helpful.

Meanwhile, something else that you might spin around in your head while you
make the build is "how do we make a virtual keyboard that works for all the
languages we have keyboards for?" (and/or, "is there another program that
already does this that could be integrated with Sugar?")

> On the other hand, even though I also come from a Spanish speaking
> country, I'd say having all the code in English (the defacto lingua
> franca for code) would be best on the long term. 

I'm not yet convinced, though I certainly appreciate your feedback.

Here are three prominent memories that still sway my opinion:

   1) I read multi-language files and communications nearly every day so, for
      me, they're already a fact of life. For example, every time I read my
      email, every time I write a Makefile, and every time I write a web-app (in
      SML, HTML, CSS, JS, and SVG) I'm facing the same general problem posed by
      Spanish-flavored vs. English-flavored patches.

   2) When OLPC sent me to visit LATU and Ceibal Jam, I was struck by the large
      quantities of interesting code written by both of those organizations...
      in Spanish. I know that I want both that code and the people writing it to
      be participating more directly in the daily development of Sugar. My best
      idea for how to achieve this goal is to try to meet them halfway.

   3) When I (briefly) taught English in a public school in Dharamsala, India, I
      found that I could not function effectively without learning enough Hindi
      to establish a working pidgin communications channel. This channel
      mattered for two reasons: first, because it served as a "control plane" for
      collaboration and second, because it generated enough mutual respect and
      interest to sustain collaboration. I feel both these needs here too.

> It's an extra effort (and I volunteer to help with translations if Esteban is
> short on time) but I think it is important to maintain consistency in
> variable names, methods and comments.

I agree that it's important be (sufficiently) consistent. However, I also
believe that an acceptable degree of consistency can be found in a codebase
that contains both Spanish and English text. Instead, the kind of inconsistency
that I am most concerned with is inconsistency in control and data flow idioms.

Regards,

Michael

> P.S.: we try to produce all of our code (in git.paraguayeduca.org) under
> the same rules (all English) so we can share it among deployments.. we
> hope it results useful for someone some day! :) 

P.S. - Thanks for the links and for the thought-provoking discussion!