[Sugar-devel] SamplePlay-2.xo in Sandbox

[Art Hunkins]

Chris,

Thanks for your observation.

I seriously considered the internationalization option prior to getting involved in writing Sugar activities.

I found that what I wanted to do was *intensively* text-based, and that if I wanted control of the look of the text (i.e., text onscreen formatting), I'd need to carefully control it - often even down to the precise number of characters.

Screen formatting especially became an issue with labels and associated text in widgets (e.g., buttons). The width of a widget would depend, for example, on the number of characters in the label - so how could I guarantee that widgets would be approximately the same size (along with corresponding text)?

I've spent a lot of effort trying to get my text screens "looking right." An international approach would require a completely different and more graphics-oriented programming approach (and I'm sure, a far more technical one than I'm capable of).

These are just *some* of my thoughts on the issue; I've a number of others. (Incidentally, in several of my activities, I've even included a supplementary .txt file with *further* explanations. It would certainly be feasible to translate these files *in toto* to different languages, and simply include them in the distribution. OTOH, the .txt files *supplement* rather than replace the on-screen materials.)

I'm well aware that my "single-language-only" approach is probably unique to the world of Sugar; I would have liked to envisage a practical, feasible alternative that might "reach more children." I'd also appreciate feedback from developers, users, whomever who have looked at the activities (such as SamplePlay or FileMix). To date, I've received very little - no doubt at least partly because the activities are rather complex and clearly directed at older children.

Art Hunkins
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chris Leonard 
  To: Art Hunkins 
  Cc: sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org 
  Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 10:43 PM
  Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] SamplePlay-2.xo in Sandbox


  Art,

  Would you please consider setting up the internationaliization to make it possible to translate this activity?

  http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/going-international-with-pootle/

  cjl


  On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Art Hunkins <abhunkin at uncg.edu> wrote:

    I hate to bother someone again to reclaim my new version of SamplePlay from the sandbox. It's been there for 5 or more days.

    Anything I should be doing to ring my bell louder? Or should I just wait quietly?

    Thanks to whomever -

    Art Hunkins 
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