Re: [Freecats-Dev] OmegaT

[Henri Chorand]

Marc Prior wrote:
> I have subscribed to the Free CATS mailing list

Welcome, Marc!

> and would be happy to share my thoughts with you (as many of you
> already know me, you will also know that I think you're entitled
> to my opinion ;-) ), but at the moment work on the OmegaT project
> is taking up any spare time I have. (I also have to do some
> translation in-between, in order to buy food :-). Very
> inconvenient!)

From Free CATS's point of view - to which, by subscribing, you just 
signed a 99 years, automatically renewable under 100 years' prior 
notice, allegiance period ;-)) and at this stage, the best we can do is 
to see how a similar issue has/hasn't been addressed.

Also, for now, if we examine Free CATS' list of aimed features, the ONLY 
request that we should ask Keith to do in OmegaT is to split its client 
& server parts via an API, if only to allow:
- a multi-user mode with HTTP access
- other clients to use the server component.

> I'll now resopnd to various comments on the list, mainly by Henri.
>
> > To put it in a nutshell: Free CATS dreamed about it, and Keith
>> did it
> This really sums it up. OmegaT is available, accessible, and usable.

As you will have guessed, I merely wanted to express my happiness in 
seeing a tool that is much more mature and closer to what we want to 
work with than any other one, to date. My little ego was also proud to 
see that a few of the options I favoured are to be found in Keith's 
software ;-)

This does not mean our quest has ended, but possibly (actually, quite 
possibly) that we will decide to forget about starting a new project 
from scratch and join forces instead.


The only "new feature" I'm pushing now is the separation between the 
client (interface) & (TM) server is because a number of experienced 
coders (like Yves Champollion) do/will see an interest in using such a 
TM server in several specific configurations:

- Yves Champollion brillantly produced Wordfast, a mature CAT tool 
(proprietary, but reasonably priced and with users in mind) that works 
from within MS Word. Free CATS project team members like me would find 
such a cooperation with free and non-free software as a good thing.

- Similarly, once the TM server is available, Stanislav Visnovsky, the 
present maintainer of KBabel, will want to build a future release of its 
baby on top of this TM server.

- Also, it should be easier to develop a plugin from within Open Office 
Writer in order to build a client of this TM server embedded within OO.

That way, and with little effort, we would be able to interest even more 
developers to this technology.


The few years I've spent working in various software houses told me 
about the (sometimes large) difference between a working prototype and a 
future mainstream tool. I think Keith will not mind if I call OmegaT a 
(very interesting) prototype.

If Keith chooses to follow this modular architecture suggestion, I 
believe OmegaT technology has a great future - at least, I'm confident 
that he'll listen what we suggest.

> (...)
> It is easy to see potential areas for further improvement of OmegaT,
> but my view is that it is better to make an open-source product
> available, and then to modify it in the light of user feedback.

> With a commercial product, there may be financial and marketing
> reasons for getting it right first time, but I feel strongly that
> a process of continual development is preferable for projects such
> as OmegaT and Free CATS.

Sure, if there is a true consensus on the project's aims, better less 
projects, and more active ones.

If Keith goes along the lines of what we're asking him above, then I'm 
personnally ready to drop my Free CATS project coordinator hat and I'll 
be happy helping at what I'm best.


I believe the present Free CATS project team can provide some real help in:
- designing a more sophisticated user interface (some of us would very 
much like to begin building models with GUI builders)
- provide a variety of test platforms
- help writing & localizing documentation
- communicate about the product in order to make it more widespread 
among professional translators & translation agencies

> (...)
> Also, an obvious source of support is the open-source coding
> community outside of translation, as there are programmers
> there willing to contribute, and they in turn can benefit from
> the product by using it to localize open-source products.

> The problem here is that the programmers do not necessarily
> have experience of the translation process, and if allowed
> to do so, may work towards solutions which are not practical
> and do not meet the actual needs of translators.

Yes, I'm sure we all want to avoid a "catch-22" situation.
Since I started Free CATS, I knew we translators had to work with 
experienced developers in order to succeed.

We started it because no free software tool has yet come and changed the 
world of CAT like Apache did for HTTP servers.
Still, all of us really do want this to happen, and the sooner the 
better :-)
BUT the last weeks showed us that that we don't have to start from 
scratch, as real solutions are emerging.


> The other thing I would encourage you all to do is, of course,
> to try OmegaT.
> It is easy to learn - in fact, a university lecturer here in
> Germany says it can be learnt in an hour.
> (...)
> Make sure you have version 1.4.x of the J2RE installed.


Well, even I should be able to do something then.
Seriously, I just downloaded it and I'll try to install it very soon (I 
hope other Free CATSers do the same), but I must first install Sun's JVM 
1.4 (or any other one).

I'll install the latest 1.0.2 release.
I'll first wait for Charles' or Keith's feedback about JVMs just to be 
sure - installing stuff on Linux is sometimes more complicated than it 
should be and I'm far from being a Linux power user yet.


Marc, I'll come back to fuzzy algorithms soon. Thanks again for your 
feedback.


Henri