[Localization] XOs for Cambodia (was Beth Kanter sent you a message on Facebook...)

[Javier SOLA]

Edward,

The difference between an talker (or evangelist as you call yourself)
and a doer is that the evangelist always talks about theory, and never
touches reality. He believes that he has the right to insult and degrade
those who do real work, believes that he is an intellectual and that
what he imagines in his intellectuialisation of problems is the one and
only truth.

I live in Cambodia and I am in charge of writing the Master Plan for ICT
in Education for the country, based on reality, not on trying to push a
specific gadget. I assume responsibility for what I do and for the
students who spend their time studying the curriculums that we prepare.
Cambodia is the first (and only) country to have changed its education
system to use FOSS applications, and this is the result of five years of
hard work here, not of some easy-chair writing in California.

You want to know what the reality of Camboya is? Come here and work
here, you are welcome to join us... and if after five months you still
think that the OLPC is the response to the needs of Cambodia, or that it
will help the least, go ahead and work on it...  but I very much doubt
that you would. Your signature in a prior message says "End Poverty at a
Profit by teaching children business"... you would understand what this
means here, and how little the OLPC responds to this...

Buit it seems to be a much easier path to insult those who do real
work.

Shame on you.

Javier Solá

P.D. Of course, you are free to use anything that we have done, that is
the spirit in which we do it.
P.D. Hi Sayamindu, long time...


Edward Cherlin wrote
> Side note: Sayamindu, why is there no Khmer localization on Pootle?
> Put one up now. I'm bringing Cambodians in, as you can see, and there
> are plenty of Cambodian .po files elsewhere for us to start from.
>
> KhmerOS: Please forward this e-mail to Javier Sola and to anybody else
> who might be interested.
>
> On Feb 19, 2008 8:04 AM, Facebook
> <notification+o4ysy=99 at facebookmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Re: OLPC XOs in Cambodia
>>
>> Edward,
>>
>> No I don't .... [know where in Cambodia the XOs are going.]
>>
>> One problem is that the Khmer OS software doesn't scale well on the screen.
>>     
>
> I believe that this and the rest of Javier Sola's objections at
> http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/give-one-get-on.html
> are spurious, in part because he obviously hasn't tried it, in part
> because he appears to be suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome as
> a member of the KhmerOS Executive Committee, and in part for the
> following positive reasons.
>
> * XOs run a version of Red Hat Linux, Fedora Rawhide 7. Anything from
> KhmerOS on SUSE Linux can run on it immediately, or be easily ported.
> (And there is no reason for KhmerOS to be distribution-specific.
> Everything in it should have been contributed to the upstream
> repositories.)
>
> * All of the Khmer localizations are in external .po files that will
> work immediately on the XO. We will of course data-mine them for our
> own localizations.
>
> * The XO does not run OpenOffice, which is indeed too large. But we
> have our own word processor and will soon have a spreadsheet from Dan
> Bricklin.
>
> * We will use stock Khmer Unicode fonts, the standard Pango rendering
> for Khmer, and a stock Khmer keyboard layout file slightly modified
> for the locations of specific keys on the XO. Keytops for Cambodia
> will be printed with Khmer and Latin alphabetic characters, and a
> keyboard switching key assignment will be set.
>
> * The XO has a 200 dpi display. If we can't read your software, your
> screens are too cluttered.
>
> I can't very well answer Javier's objections to the XO's design, since
> he doesn't say what they are. But it is laughable for him to claim
> that the XO design does not take conditions in Cambodia into account.
> Cambodia was the site of Nicholas Negroponte's first experiments in
> computers for all students. The MIT Media Lab and then OLPC have been
> in contact with the Cambodian Ministry of Education ever since.
>
> http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/09/creating_the_10.html
>
>   
>> There's also a national plan for educational technology in process - you should connect to that.
>>     
>
> We already have. The Ministry of Education is well aware that more
> than 10,000 XOs will be coming to Cambodia.
>
>   
>> Some folks left comments on these posts
>> http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/give-one-get-on.html
>>
>> I can help connect to you some folks if you want.
>>     
>
> Yes, please. Give them my contact information, and encourage them to
> join the relevant OLPC mailing lists at http:lists.laptop.org/. They
> should check out Localization, Development, and Grassroots, at least.
>
>