Re: [OOo-Hebrew] [YBA] RFI for Hebrew OOo SOW 2008

On Sun, Jan 06, 2008, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote about "[OOo-Hebrew] [YBA] RFI for Hebrew OOo SOW 2008":
> Your suggestions should be as specific as possible and realistic in an 
> engineering sense. For example:

In addition to being specific and realistic, doesn't it need to somehow be
an issue specific to Israel?

> Please post your suggestions to this list for discussion. If the 
> discussions get out of hand we will take them off-list.

My first wish, which is very specific and at least somewhat realistic is:

  get all the existing Hebrew bugfixes into the official OpenOffice.

I guess this mostly requires talking and nagging (with the OpenOffice
developer) and relatively little new programming.

Another thing I wish for  isn't very specific, but maybe it will spark
a discussion which will be more specific. What I would love to see done
is some sort of setups or frameworks which will facilitate more Israelis,
not just your team, to participate in OpenOffice development. For example,
translation can be done (even if not as well as you did) by a team of
volunteers, and bug fixing and adding features can also be done by volunteers
from the general public.  But I think that what's stopping this is the shear
complexity of the OpenOffice project.

For example, I saw that you recently commented on Rene's bug report that the
OpenOffice's builtin Hspell (not the hunspell dictionary of Hspell) needs to be
updated. Dan and I have clearly shown our interest in making Hebrew spell-
checking a reality for OpenOffice, and we are the ones who created the hunspell
format Hebrew dictionary for OpenOffice, but we simply have no idea how to
write a spell-checker for OpenOffice, which is why Alan had to do it. If
there was a way in which this complexity could be simplified, and we had a
way to focus on the Hspell code and not on compiling millions of lines of
code for OpenOffice, maybe we could have done (and can do in the future) this
work and save you the time.

> Tk Open Systems acts as a contractor to the MoF for the Hebrew OOo 
> project. Both Boaz Dolev (MoF) and I have ideas about where to take the 
> project in the coming year, but since you, the public, are providing the 
> funding, you should have the final say. This is your opportunity.

I think that OpenOffice in Hebrew has gone a long way in the last several
years. From a buggy and barely workable solution for Hebrew documents, it
has become a very useful word processor. I believe that for the Hebrew support
not to "decay", at least some minimal level of work needs to be maintained
at fixing small bugs and preventing "decay". I think that such minimal level
of work also needs to be funded.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, Jan  6 2008, 28 Tevet 5768
[email protected]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The meek shall inherit the Earth, for
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |they are too timid to refuse it.
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