Language Localization for Engelsystem

Localization takes place when you adapt content to a specific location. In translation, it means that your content can be read by another in their native language with as much ease as if the information were written in that language to begin with. In other words, just translating a document does not mean that it has been localized. When it is your brand, information, or material at stake, it is important to understand the elements that separate a mere translation from the language localization necessary to maximize impact with your target audience.

Some Examples of Localized Content

Understanding excellent localization may be easier with some positive examples.

  • Google is the search engine of choice in much of the English-speaking world. It accounts for only one percent of the search market in China, however. Baidu gives Chinese users the look and feel that they understand. Has Google given up? Hardly, they are working on improving the localization of their content.
  • Many television and phone manufacturers compete for the French markets. Samsung is made in Korea, but they marketed themselves according to the French tastes and desires. The manufacturer stressed the artistic design and high definition of its televisions. Their phones were tailored to the French market with apps specifically designed for the French lifestyle and location of the users.
  • Packaging is very important to an American consumer, even with toiletries; it is not very important at all to Chinese consumers. Proctor and Gamble localized their product marketing for Crest toothpaste by reducing their packaging costs and focusing on the flavors, which the Chinese do value. The localization not only increased their market share but cut their costs by 50 percent.

Remember, the purpose of localization is to give your text or product the impression that they were designed or written specifically for that market regardless of the language, culture, or location.

Understanding the Localization Process in Translation

Within the world of translation, localization includes a number of critical elements such as:

  • Modification of grammar, punctuation, and lexical elements
  • Adaptation of formality and other culturally-based items of etiquette
  • Ensuring figurative language is replaced with localized idioms and metaphors
  • Making sure content is culturally sensitive and relevant
  • Aligning conversions such as money, time, dates, voltages, and so forth
  • Formatting numbers, values, and so on according to local variations
  • Verifying the text and format meet legal requirements

In order to localize content, the translator must have a comprehensive understanding of the culture, the language, and the specific field the information references. Note, in the list above, those cultural adaptations are as important to the translation as lexical and grammatical issues. Local sensitivities must be considered to avoid conflicts with culture, customs, or habits.

Some specific items that might be tailored to the local populace are references to political leaders or situations that are deemed offensive (think about China and Taiwan), animals (rats are looked upon favorably in china as is the chicken), flowers, gestures, shoes (wearing shoes inside can be taboo), gum (illegal in Singapore), meats (think about Kosher or Halal ideals, vegetarianism is also stressed in some places), smoking (banned for Sikhs), and bodily functions (what is funny or cute for some is offensive to others).

If your documents, texts, or project will be going to several locations and translated into several local languages, you might want to consider “internationalizing” it first. This is the process of highlighting or adjusting any questionable text or ideas in advance to save the translator’s time when preparing it for the local dialect. The process is most effective when done during the formulation stages of the document, but it can be done later as well. For papers that are going to be translated into multiple languages, the time and expense that could be saved through this step are tremendous.

Whether your documents go through an intermediary step or are translated straight to a local language, it is imperative that your translation service understands the importance of an exhaustive and thorough localization process.

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When selecting translation services, one of the most important questions you can ask is whether or not you want your documents prepared for internationalization or localization.

Localization is the process of translating a document or project for use within a specific target market. Localization includes all of the components of translation required to meet cultural and linguistic adaptations of text. Localization can be accomplished from an original source text, or from a test that has been prepared for international translation.

Internationalization is the process of preparing a document or project to be used anywhere in the world and localized as necessary. The process of creating a document that is bothlinguistically deliverable and culturally sensitive for a worldwide audience is not easy or quick. Yet, when internationalization takes place during the initial stages of product development it is far easier than trying to work backwards, and a document that has been successfully internationalized can be quickly and easily localized.

Understanding the Elements

Some of the elements that are impacted during the internationalization or localization process include:

  • Formatting: Not everybody formats their date the same way. Time signatures are also not universal. Even numbers are not standard. Deciding where to put colons, commas, symbols and the like will make a huge difference in the readability of your final document.
  • Symbols/Abbreviations: English speakers often do not realize that their symbols are not universal. When symbols are used in text, they can take on many different meanings based upon the target language. Other times, the symbol may have no meaning at all, in which case the intent of the content will have been lost without a proper translation. Consider such a simple abbreviation as E. for east: since the German word for east is osten, east would be O. Even if we agreed to use metric vs imperial or American units, a square kilometer (sq km) would be a German Quadratkilometer or qkm.
  • Gender: English does not assign gender to most items, Spanish and French assign gender to just about everything, Japanese has gender, but also special rules for adults and children.
  • Graphics:Items that are just fine in one culture may be meaningless in another culture, or, worse, offensive and derogatory. For example, the stork delivers babies in many cultures; however, in Japan, a stork and baby will not have the same meaning. Colors also have different meanings in different cultures. Not everybody associates white with purity, weddings, and truth.
  • Legal Requirements: who has to sign documents, where do signatures go, are witnesses required, who is allowed to be a witness, and so forth. If you are doing business in an international community, these are essential elements of translation.

Why Internationalization or Localization is so Important

If your document is going to go to one region or local, and only one region or local, direct translation into the target text is the cheapest and most expedient way to translate your document. However, suppose you have a document that is going to be translated into 10, 20, even 50 different languages.

While you could hire a unique translator for each language independent of all others, another approach would be to go through the internationalization process. During this process, translators would create a master document that addresses the main elements that would be difficult to translate. They would standardize the elements that could be standardized, and highlight those ideas which are going to need more elaboration by a local translator. This way, when the translators who will be working on the localized documents start their translations, much of the groundwork has already been done for them.

When choosing a translation service, you will want to know the number of target languages. If you only have one or two, you may be better off going with a straight translation; however, if you are going to be addressing multiple languages (even many within the same family: Mexican Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Andalusian Spanish) you may be able to save considerable time.

During the 3rd week of my Summer of Code, I’ve implemented localization on Engelsystem. Users can get more information on my previous blog post, here.

In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on adding more languages to the system. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem                                           Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Continue ReadingLanguage Localization for Engelsystem

Language Localization on Engelsystem

During the 3rd  week of my Summer of Code, I worked on implementing Localization of different languages on the system and creating a different settings page for user and admin.

One of our goals is for Engelsystem to be a great experience for users worldwide. To achieve this goal we need to make some significant changes. The main reason of localization is that it can be used by different people with different native languages across the world and help them to understand the system better .

First, a little background.

Right now, Engelsystem has two localization systems available:

  • Deutsch
  • English

All of the current translations will be updated. We are also expanding the list of supported languages to as many as we can. Currently, I’ve implemented:

  • Bulgarian
  • Chinese- simplified
  • English UK
  • French
  • Hindi-IN
  • Hungarian
  • Irish
  • Punjabi-IN
  • Spanish
  • Tamil-IN

The tools used in implementing localization are poedit where we create the .po files .

For installing Poedit on Linux distro’s, users can use the following command in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install poedit

For Windows and Mac users, they can download the executable file here.

Steps to run Poedit in Linux/Windows/Mac:

  1. choose File → New Catalog.Enter the details in Translation properties like your email. Source code charset should be selected as UTF-8.Now the source path should be selected as (.) dot to tell Poedit to search for PHP files in the same folder.
    06
  2. In the source, there are three options ‘_’ , ‘gettext’ and  ‘gettext_noop’.Make sure all necessary functions are added and press OK.
  3. Now we can see the list of strings on left and their translated strings on the right.we need to install the necessary dictionary for this.
    07
  4. Save the file  with an extension ‘.po’ . 

    In Engelsystem, to implement the translated localization file we need to make the changes in the file,internationalization_helper.php

    $locales = array(
    ‘de_DE.UTF-8’ => “Deutsch”,
    ‘hi_IN.UTF-8’ => “Hindi”,
    ‘sp_EU.UTF-8’ => “Spanish”,
    ‘en_US.UTF-8’ => “English”
    );

    During the week 3 of my Summer of Code I also worked on creating different settings page for user and Admin. Earlier settings page for user and admin were same, providing same privileges to both of them. Now we have separate pages for both.

                                                                             User Settings
    Admin Settings
                                                                        Admin Settings

    In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on adding more languages to the system. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

    Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem                                           Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Continue ReadingLanguage Localization on Engelsystem

A look into the knitting pattern format

We are currently working on a format that allows to exchange instructions for knitting independent of how it is going to be knit: by a machine like Brother, Pfaff, or by hand.

For this to be possible we need the format to be as general as possible and have no ties to a specific form of knitting. At some point the transition to a format specifically designed for a certain machine is necessary. However, we believe that it is possible to have a format so general that instructions for all types of machines and for hand knitting could be generated from it.

We have decided to use JSON as the language to describe the format, because it is machine readable and human readable at the same time.
The structure of our format follows the rows in knitting.

Our first thought was about creating a format that would describe how meshes are connected and how the thread travels. This would allow for great flexibility and it should be possible to represent everything like this. However, we have decided against it, because we think this format would be quite complicated (different orientations and twists of meshes possible, different threads for multiple colors…) and would get quite big very quickly, because of all the different properties for each mesh and because of all the meshes. Furthermore, and this point is probably more important, knitters do not think this way. If we had a format like that, it would not be easy to understand what was happening for human beings.

Whenever I knit by hand, I never think about how all the meshes are connected by this single thread I am using. I always think about which operations I am performing when knitting in each row. Instructions for creating patterns in knitting are also written this way. They give the knitter a set of knitting instructions to do and possibly repeat. We have concluded, that most knitters think in knitting operations performed rather than connections between meshes.

17-diag

Knitting instructions from Garnstudio’s Café.

Therefore we have decided to base our format on knitting instructions/operations. The most common instructions probably are: knit, purl, cast on, bind off, knit two together, yarn over. Of course for increases and decreases there are many different operations which work in a similar way but have slight differences (e.g. skp, k2tog).
Since in knitting many things are possible and it is unlikely that we ever manage to create a complete list of all the possible operations you can perform in knitting we have decided to have a very open format, that allows the definition of new instructions.

Instructions are also defined in JSON format. Here is an example, the “k2tog” instruction:

[
    {
        "type" : "k2tog",
        "title" : {
            "en-en" : "Knit 2 Together"
        },
        "number of consumed meshes" : 2,
        "description" : {
            "wikipedia" : {
                "en-en" : "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting_abbreviations#Types_of_knitting_abbreviations"
            },
            "text" : {
                "en-en" : "Knit two stitches together, as if they were one stitch."
            }
        }
    }
]

 

Knitting patterns consist of multiple rows, which consist of multiple instructions. Furthermore we want to define the connections between rows. This is important, so we can express gaps or slits which are multiple rows long. For example when knitting pants the two legs will be separate. They will be knit separately and their combined width will be increased in comparison to the width of the hip.
Here is an example for a pattern which specifies a cast on in the first row, then a row where all stitches are knit, then the last row is bound off.

{
  "type" : "knitting pattern",
  "version" : "0.1",
  "comment" : {
    "content" : "cast on and bind off",
    "type" : "markdown"
    },
  "patterns" : [
    {
      "id" : "knit",
      "name" : "cobo",
      "rows" : [
        {
          "id" : 1,
          "instructions" : [
            {"id": "1.0", "type": "co"},
            {"id": "1.1", "type": "co"},
            {"id": "1.2", "type": "co"},
            {"id": "1.3", "type": "co"}
          ]
        },
        {
          "id" : 2,
          "instructions" : [
            {"id": "2.0"},
            {"id": "2.1"},
            {"id": "2.2"},
            {"id": "2.3"}
          ]
        },
        {
          "id" : 3,
          "instructions" : [
            {"id": "3.0", "type": "bo"},
            {"id": "3.1", "type": "bo"},
            {"id": "3.2", "type": "bo"},
            {"id": "3.3", "type": "bo"}
          ]
        }
      ],
      "connections" : [
        {
          "from" : {
            "id" : 1
          }, 
          "to" : {
            "id" : 2
          }
        },
        {
          "from" : {
            "id" : 2
          }, 
          "to" : {
            "id" : 3
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Connections are defined “from” one row “to” another.  The ids identify the rows. The optional attribute start defines the mesh where the connection starts. If start is not defined, the first mesh of the row is assumed. When indexing the list of meshes in a row the first index is 1. The optional attribute “meshes” describes how many meshes will be connected, starting from the mesh defined in “start”.

The resulting parsed Python object structure looks like this:

row model

The Python object structure for working with the parsed knitting pattern.

Each row has a list of instructions. Each instruction produces a number of meshes and consumes a number of meshes. These meshes are also the meshes that are consumed/produced by the rows.

 

Continue ReadingA look into the knitting pattern format

Improvements in sTeam shell and export script

(ˢᵒᶜⁱᵉᵗʸserver) aims to be a platform for developing collaborative applications.
sTeam server project repository: sTeam.

Logs

A breakthrough in sTeam development took place. Siddhant Gupta was able to successfully implement the TLS protocol in pike.

The Logs were displayed erroneously. Also the user was not able to scroll down the log to the latest message.  The golden ratio script used in the program was updated to it’s latest version.

Also the editor is opened using sudo command so as to access the vim scrips in the /usr/local/lib/steam/tools directory.
The files are opened using the vim command:
vim -S script -c edit filename1|sp filename2

Only one buffer is accessible at a time. In order to switch the buffer to log buffer the command is CTRL+Ww. Enter this command directly without entering the vim terminal using :.
The log buffer would be accessible, can be edited and scrolled down to the latest log message.

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Access the log window till the end. Issue-20 PR-48
Open appropriate log window when a sTeam command is executed. Issue-49 PR-51

ScrollToLatest

The logs were displayed erroneously. Ideally the log should be displayed based on the buffer where the sTeam function is called and accordingly the relevant log buffer should be called and display the output. This error was fixed.

MultTabs

The log is displayed in the file named after the file which is opened and concatenated with the suffix “-disp”. In Vi the  :% buffer stores the value of the current file. Consequently this value was concatenated with “-disp” to display the buffer accordingly. The Vi script can be seen below.
ViFunc

Export to git script.

The  export-to-git script was tested vigorously.  All the known issue’s based on the script were replicated in the system and solution was found for them.

The export to git script is now capable of exporting multiple sources at a time. If the last argument is always the target repository then any number of previous arguments can be sources.

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Support Multiple Source arguments Issue-14 Issue-19 PR-54
Include Source-name in branch name and add branch description. Issue-9 PR-55

Example command :
./export-to-git.pike /home/sTeam/file1 /home/coder/file2 /home/sTeam/container3 ~/gitfolder

The export-to-git script also exports the source name in the branch.  To help distinguish between the branches, we need more descriptive names:

./export-to-git.pike /sources/ /tmp/export-test/

This should create the branch sources-cur_time. Also when a file is specifically exported:

./ecport-to-git.pike /home/coder/demo1.txt /temp/export-test/

would create a branch with name home/coder/demo1.txt-cur_time. This is done to avoid ambiguity between files with same name existing in different locations.
Also a description is added fo the branch name using the git command
git config branch.<branch name>.description "describe branch"
To view this description go to the folder where the branch is exported and then enter the git command
git config branch.<branch name>.description

Export to Git script executing when Multiple Source arguments passed and the modified branch name.
GitExportAndBranchName

Branch Description

BranchDesc

Checkout the FOSSASIA Idea’s page for more information on projects supported by FOSSASIA.

Continue ReadingImprovements in sTeam shell and export script

Export Timeline as iCal

iCal or iCalendar is the Internet standard for sharing event schedules or session timelines among each other. The filename extension for iCal is .ics . It is supported by a number of applications such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar,] Yahoo! Calendar, Lightning extension for Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, and partially by Microsoft Outlook . In Open Event Organizer’s Server we have added a feature to export the Schedule of a particular Event in iCal format.

Continue ReadingExport Timeline as iCal

steam-shell: Two processes in one terminal

Community bonding period turned out to be quite fruitful I got to know my community really well and not only that I also solved quite a number of issues which helped me understand the code base. Daily scrum meetings played a very important role in making us work professionally and cover some substantial work. Official coding period began on 23rd May and I was all set for the challenges and the sleepless nights to come. Here I will be discussing the tasks I covered in my first week.

As suggested by my mentors I had changed my plans a bit by moving the work on edit command before implementing the TLS layer on COAL. I started small by fixing the edit command. The edit command opens the specified file in vi/vim/emac. In vi and vim the editor was misbehaving and not letting us work on the file. I took up this as my first task for Google Summer of Code 2016. This helped me understand steam-shell and applauncher, which is used to load the editor, in detail. Vi and vim editors have an advantage of letting the user edit the file in the same terminal window.

Looking at the issue itself it was not possible to do any kind of backtracking. The vi editor was just throwing rubbish on the screen when the user attempted to type anything.

overlapping process
vi editor showing the garbage and the steam-shell command

At first I was under the impression that it was a problem with the editor itself. I even tried approaching the vi.stackexchange.com , where the vi developers could help me. However all this was in vain. After a lot more forensics and re-reading the code multiple number of times I realized two process were active and sharing the same terminal space. How did I come to this conclusion? Well it was a very minute detail that I noticed. While in the vi editor window, with the document open and the editor throwing garbage at you when you press the up arrow the editor clears some area and show the commands executed on the steam-shell. This can be seen in the above image

This simply meant that both the process for steam-shell and the vi editor was running and sharing the same terminal space. The solution was quite simple. Just called editor→wait() to suspend the calling the process till the called process was over.

Continue Readingsteam-shell: Two processes in one terminal

FOSSASIA Summit 2016 Science Centre Singapore – Wrap Up

FOSSASIA 2016 took place from 18th -20th March in Singapore. Hong Phuc DangMario BehlingHarish Pillay, and Roland Turner were leading the organization efforts for the 2016 summit supported by many volunteers, speakers and the community. With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.

We would like to especialy thank our host venue and the wonderful team of the Science Centre Singapore, our partner UNESCO Youth Mobile and our sponsors Red Hat, Google, GitHub, MySQL, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, gandi.net, General Assembly and the Internet Society Singapore for their support and participation. Thanks to everyone who helped to make FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore possible!

FOSSASIA 2016 Group Photo at Science Centre Singapore by Michael Cannon

FOSSASIA’16 NUMBERS & FACTS

  • We reached the number of 2,917 attendees over 3 days including 230 speakers and 72 volunteers.
  • With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.
  • There were 201 scheduled sessions and lightning talks, and more 50 exhibitors.
  • This was the first year we organised Tech Kids program with 14 hands-on workshops that covered Mobile Development, Electronics, Digital Fabrication, Pocket Science and 3D Modeling.
  • Dozens of talks are already available as videos. Thousands of photos have been uploaded to social networks. 1500+ tweets with the FOSSASIA hashtag were posted during the event.
  • A trend analysis of FOSSASIA shows that web technologies, data analytics and Internet of Things have a huge momentum. The attention of developers is also increasingly turning to open hardware.

Opening HallMario Behling the superman behind our programCat Allman

Happy Volunteers

Day 1 Opening of FOSSASIA

The first day started at the OpenTech and IoT track with a warm welcome message from Mr. Lim Tit Meng, the director of Science Centre, follow by some of our keynotes including Cat Allman with her inspiring story on Science & Education Program at Google; Harish Pillay with his intriguing title ‘A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To The Science Centre’ revealing the history of Internet and Open Source; Bernard Leong caught a huge attention on ‘Rethinking Drone Delivery with Open Source’; and Davide Storti introduced the exciting MobileYouth Program at UNESCO. The day continued with many other interesting talks/discussions and five other tracks were opened that afternoon of the same day namely Tech Kids, Hardware and IoT, DevOps, Big Data, Internet Society and Community.

More Photos: [Photo 1], [Photo 2], [Photo 3] – Tech Kids Track

Day 2 Intensive day of workshops and more discussion

Stephanie Taylor opened the second day of FOSSASIA with her informative presentation on Google Summer of Code Program and Google Code-In. Many GSoC and GCI students from Asia attended this year FOSSASIA. The day continued with series of workshops and discussions on Hardware, IoT, and DevOps. Four new tracks were added into the program including OpenTech Workshop, Python, WebTech and Databases.

Popular DevOps Track

Harish Pillay proudly presenting his first computer

Day 3 Hack Sunday and the closing notes

At the last day, we opened another three new tracks: Privacy and Security, Linux and MiniDebConf, Design VR and 3D. More hacking activities took place on Sunday. Participants formed in-depth discussion groups.

People gathering at the closing

Exhibition

More than 50 project booths and hand-on demos were set up in the Science Centre’s public space where participants could hang out, chat, discuss, share, learn, and hack.

Nanyang Polytechnic teacher and students presenting their Student Enrich ProgramExhibition hallUNESCO YouthMobile InitiativeSnapshot of Red Hat booth – Developers ChatGitHub corner

FOSSASIA – a place of friendship and joy.

As always thanks to our photographer Michael Cannon and his team for capturing some of the very best moment of us. You can search for more photos by typing #fossasia on Twitter or Flickr. If you also want to share some photos you took during FOSSASIA with us, please get in touch with me hp@fossasia.org

Excited developers from across Asia
Baby Py with her parents at the social event

What’s next in 2016?

  • FOSSASIA will again participate at Google Summer of Code
  • Call for collaboration: We welcome new contributors to FOSSASIA current projects
  • A number of new releases of FOSSASIA software projects and our event planning applications are planned. Please check out http://github.com/fossasia and http://github.com/loklak
  • Many people in the FOSSASIA community organize developer meetups throughout the year. Please join our meetups in Singapore, in Dubai and many other cities in Asia.

Blog Posts

Many participants at FOSSASIA have blogged about the event. Some links here:

Kushal Das – kushaldas.in
Fedora Community Blog – p96.io
Anwesha Das – anweshadas.in
Garvit Delhi – garvitdelhi.blogspot.com
Ankit Ashukla – ankitashukla707.wordpress.com
Sundeep Anand – sundeep.co.in
Jigyasa Grover – jigyasagrover.wordpress.com
Michael Downey – talk.openmrs.org
Owais Zahid – eleventhlane.wordpress.com
Woo Hui Ren – woohuiren.me
Daniel Pocock – danielpocock.com
Tobias Mueller – blogs.gnome.org/muelli
Menghsuan Tsai – facebook.com/notes/

Links

FOSSASIA Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fossasia/

FOSSASIA Videos: Youtube FOSSASIA 

FOSSASIA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fossasia

FOSSASIA Sg Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/FOSSASIA

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA Summit 2016 Science Centre Singapore – Wrap Up

Enhancement of steam-shell plugin and Import from git

(ˢᵒᶜⁱᵉᵗʸserver) aims to be a platform for developing collaborative applications.
sTeam server project repository: sTeam.

Indentation of output made independent of the screen-width.

There were errors encountered in the pull request. These needed to be modified. The notable one’s were the Indentation of the output displayed by the look command in the steam-shell. The earlier display was taken into consideration that the default size of the linux terminal is 80 char long. However this can differ from individual to individual terminal settings. Therefore the module reference of pike was studied and a method to display the contents in the output of ls command format was written down. Thus,  now the output is independent of the screen width of an individual.

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Indentation of output in steal-shell. Issue-24 PR-42

Indentation

Also there were minor errors in the edit.pike script. These were resolved too. The edit.pike was not able to exit the program. Therefore an exit(0) call was made. This resulted in the edit.pike being able to exit successfully but a new error was introduced in the steam-shell.pike. When the edit.pike command was called inside it, the steam-shell.pike would exit on successfully completing the edit command. The steam-shell should not exit in this case. There were changes made in the VisTeam.pike, edit.pike and applauncher.pike in order to get the utility working correctly.

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Edit.pike hangs on closing Issue-29 PR-44
Edit command closes the steam-shell abruptly Issue-43 PR-44

The steam-shell vim plugin was modified and the support for multi line commands was added. Now the user can type the commands in multipe lines, format them and then execute them. The output will be displayed in a new tab.

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Integrate sTeam-shell into Vi. Issue-37 PR-41

An example of it can be seen below:-

ListGates
Output:

OutputMult

The import-from-git.pike script is used to import contents from a normal git repository into the steam directory. The import from git script was studied and understood initially. The issue’s listed were replicated in the system and a possible solution for them was found out.

The script has support for importing multiple documents at the same time. Also the objects imported supported only text mime type. The script was modified to support other mime types by initially detecting them through an external process. However later in the server/factories/Document_factory.pike file the auto detecting of mime type was found out and used in the code. Now the mime types are detected and updated successfully for documents of other mime types like MP3, jpg, png etc

Issue. Github Issue Github PR
Auto-detect Mime type. Issue-18 PR-45

ImportMimeType

The contents of objects of types other than text mime type were not been read by the existing process. As a result this resulted into creation of empty objects with the set mime type. The process to read the contents was modified and the contents of objects of other types were set accordingly. The content is read in the form of a string. Since every object can be read as a string.

However in the import-from-git an issue was encountered. Indexing over Null value with set_contents for every object created by the script. On running the script again the earlier object is successfully imported but the same error is encountered over the next object to be imported. This issue would be looked down and tried to be solved. Also support for importing single objects will be provided.

Error1

 

Checkout the FOSSASIA Idea’s page for more information on projects supported by FOSSASIA.

Continue ReadingEnhancement of steam-shell plugin and Import from git

Towards a unified digital aproach to knitting

Our idea is to create a knitting library for a format that allows conversion of knitting projects, patterns and tutorials. Usually, communities will only focus on the knitting format for their machines. Our approach should be different and be able to support any knitting communities efforts.

Here is our strategy to achieve this:

  • We connect to different communities to get a broader view on what their needs are.
  • Our knitting format is based on knitting instructions like knit, purl, yarn over, skp. We found a comprehensive list on Wikipedia.

Other Communities

From time to time we meet with other people who also knit and could use our software.

First, we met with Viktoria from ETIB Berlin. She taught us a lot about knitting, how she does it, that almost everything could be created from one peace with the machine. Also, that AYAB is used for lace patterns. We saw examples where she let meshes fall so that larger holes were created. Our goal is to support laces in the file format.  Color patterns should be possible across sewing edges.

We are also in touch with Valentina Project. With their software we would be able to connect to yet another community and use their sewing patterns for custom-fit clothes.

We got in touch with Kniterate. They and we share a lot of goals. Because they create a startup, they are very cautious what they release. They focus on their open-source knitting machine first and later on the software. They already created an editor much like we imagined ours to be, but as a web application. A way of collaboration could be that we understand their file format and see how we can support it.

Only talking about our GSoC project is worth it as other people may have seen alike at Maker Faires and other hacky places. We have the chance to bring communities and efforts together.

Knitting Format

A universal knitting format has many concerns:

  • Languages of users differ
  • It should be possible to knit by hand
  • Mesh sizes and wool differ
  • Different knitting machines with different abilities
  • A knitting format for exchange is never complete. A knitting format for machines must be complete.

In contrast to a knitting format for a automatic machine, it is possible, to have machines operate in semi-automatic modes or just to knit by hand. In both cases, meshes could be changed in a way that was never foreseen. This is why we did not base it on meshes and mesh types but rather on instructions – closer to the mental model of the knitters who perform instructions with their hand.

Some of the instructions are understood by the machines, some could be adapted a bit so the machine can do it automatically or faster and some are still necessary to be done by hand. We created a Python module for that, “knittingpattern“. We work on it in a test-driven way.

 

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New Color Schemes in Engelsystem

Engelsystem is a well-built MVC application. It seems to have everything an event manager could want. During the Week 2 of my Summer of Code, I worked on creating new color schemes/themes for the system. Engelsystem initially had 4 color schemes:

  1. Engelsystem cccamp15
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  2. Engelsystem 32C3

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  3. Engelsystem Dark

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  4. Engelsystem Light

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Color wields enormous sway over our attitudes and emotions. When our eyes take in a color, they communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which in turn sends a cascade of signals to the pituitary gland, on to the endocrine system, and then to the thyroid glands. The thyroid glands signal the release of hormones, which cause fluctuation in mood, emotion, and resulting behavior.

Research from QuickSprout indicates that 90% of all product assessments have to do with color. “Color,” writes Neil Patel, is “85% of the reason you purchased a specific product.” It’s a no-brainer fact of any website that color affects conversions. Big time.

So, the bottom line is: use the right colors, and you win.

Color schemes lets the user to set the system looks (i.e how the system will appear) which the user likes. During the week 2 of my Summer of Code, I worked on implementing 2 new color schemes for the system:

  1. Engelsystem color scheme-1

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  2. Engelsystem color scheme-2

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In the later weeks, other developers and I would be working on creating more themes and enhancing them. Anyone who would like to work in the project are welcome. Developers can feel free to take up any issues they would like to work on just like any other open source projects.

Development: https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem                                           Issues/Bugs:https://github.com/fossasia/engelsystem/issues

Continue ReadingNew Color Schemes in Engelsystem