Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Fuel : Means and End

After the public release of Fuel first language Hindi, lots of questions arises and need answers. I believe that these questions will certainly be valuable in giving Fuel a better shape and size. Some of the major aspects I tried to explain here...

1. Fuel is a Collaborative, Open and Transparent way to achieve standardization
Inclusiveness and participation are the backbone of Fuel process. It provides public review process in creating terms. It is having a version control system, bug tracker and ticketing system and a public mailing list through which anybody can take part in discussion about it. With the help of collaborative and open process Fuel is able to generate quality localized content.

2. Fuel should not be confused with a simple glossary
Though Fuel's 'end' is to come with a 'standardized' 'glossary' but the 'means' through this is evolving is entirely different. Here, as we shown for Hindi language, we are coming with a glossary by public evaluation by all the active communities, not only from Firefox or OpenOffice or Gnome or Kde localizers..., but all groups sat together at one place and discussed issues and finally decided that from now onwards we will use these 'standardized' entries only for the desktop translation these entries. Fuel is based on the consensus of active communities. So here comes the end of inconsistency!

3. Fuel considers whole desktop in totality
FUEL will be an attempt to put effort of standardization for desktop as a whole, desktop in totality instead of concentrating on different applications one by one. This approach has several benefit over others. One major benefit is that its usability is much more than others who take different applications individually. Also, for creating manuals it's benefit is big. It has nothing to do with the quantity of translation, it concentrates on giving consistently highly quality content.

4. Fuel is/can be the main catalyst, main fuel, main motivator behind a language having no terminology. If any language is not having terminology than Fuel is able to give a quick idea about the major entries that s/he is going to translate for her/his language. I, personally, think that language having no terminology should first concentrate on making at least primary level glossary. It is also making the review process easier. At present just 578 entries to start with!

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