<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 3:40 AM, Bastien <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bastienguerry@googlemail.com">bastienguerry@googlemail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div class="Ih2E3d">"Nicholas Bodley" <<a href="mailto:nbodley@speakeasy.net">nbodley@speakeasy.net</a>> writes:<br><br>> Without more information, that seems strange. Afaik, we have a Nepalese<br>> keyboard layout, yet we couldn't manage a German layout, which might be<br>
> standard in roughly 15 countries? Good grief! I surely have no dislike at<br>> all for Nepal; it's a developing country, but, I'm sure, has a much<br>> smaller number of people than are in countries that use the German layout.<br>
<br></div>I guess there is a nepalese keyboard because there is a deployment<br>there. How many countries with a need for a german keyboard have a<br>contract with OLPC? (No rhetoric question, I would really like to<br>
know!)<br><br></blockquote>
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<div>OLE Nepal started out with 135 XOs deployed in two schools. Quoting from the OLE Nepal blog <a href="http://blog.olenepal.org/">http://blog.olenepal.org/</a> "The OLPC Project in Nepal will enter its second phase when the next school session begins in April, 2009. In the second phase, OLE Nepal, in partnership with the DoE, plans to expand the project to more than 20 schools in at least 5 different districts in the country." From comments made by Bryan Berry on IRC, I believe this second phase will number in the thousands of XOs, which certainly qualifies it as a substantive finanical commitment to a deployment that would justify a custom SKU being specified/manufactured. </div>
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<div>There are certainly dedicated volunteer communities in Western European countries where (for instance) German has official standing, as an example, OLPC Austria created and hosts the database that coordinates the Contributor's Program for getting XOs to inidviduals that want to contribute to software develoment on the XO) . Other Western European volunteers and groups have also played important roles in developed countries where there are former colonial relationships or simply a desire to provide humanitarian assistance, but this is not the same as funding for a multi-thousand unit manufacturing run.</div>
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<div>According to Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language</a></div>
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<div>Namibia is apparently the only developing country where German has an"official" standing, while I believe there may be some small pilots in Western Europe being cooked up, I haven't read of any substantial commitments from say Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, or Luxembourg to deploy amounts in the thousands. If such a commitment were to be made and if a German keyboard design were required, I know of no technical barriers to it being designed/approved/manufactured. </div>
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<div>cjl</div>
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