Sahana India localization sprint report

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Ajay Kumar

We had a Sahana localization sprint session organized in India and over the IRC, for contributors from other parts, on 1st November 2008 from 11 AM to 6 PM. It was exciting to see people turning out on time and eventually participating with some sheer amount of discussions going on in #sahana, the project’s official IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

The main agenda was to increase the localization statistics, ensuring quality of translations at the same time, of Hindi and other Indic languages. And we ended up adding on contributions to *Hindi* and *Bengali*.

Bangla contribution was kicked off this day with 3 people contributing namely:

[name - country/team - IRC nickname]:

They were able to take up the statistics to 6% on the day for both bn and bn_IN. And at the end of the day we got some good news as well! Mayah Alam Khan got the news that he is going to be a father! after the session. We wish him and his wife a hearty congratulations on this beautiful news :) on the sprint day!

All of them started working on bn_IN first and we merged the same files to bn_BD which would later be modified as per the Bangladesh locale.

For Hindi we had the following people, including me [ajuonline] , working:

[name - country/team - IRC nickname]:

The final statistics for Hindi was taken to 86% from the earlier 82% with some quality check done by installing Sahana with the Hindi language pack and browsing through.

* While the internet at the venue stopped working as soon as we started because of the server problem which couldnt be fixed by the end, the 3 people at the venue, me, Nandeep & Jeba were not able to key in any translations.

I ran off the Internet using my cellphone’s GPRS connection and did the review while Rajesh worked on the files. I would like to specifically mention that the earlier status of 82% was a result of significant contributions from all of us :) Just that this particular day we could not do much.

We had visitors to the channel from the Indian community to check out and talk to us :) and also talk to others about the activity going on. We had a Gujarati language translator, Kartik Mistry [India - kart_ ], sign up on this day too. So we hope to get Gujarati translations taken care of soon!

Special Thanks to:

  • Gora Mohanty of Sarai, New Delhi and a prominent face of the FOSS world in India, for hosting us and help spread the Sahana message.
  • Dominic König – Our translation server admin,  Sahana PMC member and a friend :) , for being present there to assist with issues, instructions and to guide us. He was up at 7 AM in the morning, as per his time zone, for the event!! Thank you Dominic, I must say you rock!
  • The contributors working on the translation, all who are in someway or the other are active FOSS contributors.
  • People who helped spread the message about Sahana translation to the mailing lists and IRC channels in the Indian community, especially from ##linux-india.

The communication channels used were the mailing lists and IRC Channel. The log of the threads and chat specific to this event can be found here:

Conducting such an activity did help spread awareness about “What Sahana is?” and “Localization Needs of Sahana” in the Indian community for sure apart from kickstarting the Indic localization activities, and we have been receiving comments on people talking about Sahana in India and willing to contribute. So I am looking forward to have more contributions from India to this noble project.

Sahana is a useful piece of software and translations of it in various Indian languages is still something to be completed. So in case you are willing to contribute to it, do join in the project mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/sahana-localization and help translate Sahana!

Report by Dominic König : http://edrs.nursix.org/?p=31

This post on Sahana Blog: http://talksahana.com/2008/11/03/sahana-india-localization-sprint-report/

Posted in Events, GSoC 2008, Sahana | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sahana coming to FOSS.in/2008 :)

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Ajay Kumar

Sahana is going to be present at FOSS.in/2008 in Bangalore, India in the last week of November.  I will be representing the Sahana project and interacting with the FOSS contributors present at the event from India & abroad and the community.

A coding session, termed as a “workout”, is planned to make feature additions to the Sahana Messaging module at the event, which would involve interested participants writing code for Sahana at the event.  The detailed plan of the proposed workout is present here at the Sahana Wiki. Interested people can participate in the discussion on the Sahana Developer Mailing list and help out in planning the module features and make any suggestions they might have.

Workout: SMS Public Information Feature addition to Sahana Messaging

Event: FOSS.IN

Place: Bangalore, India.

Date: 25-29 November, 2008.

PS: Exact schedule of the workout during any of these days will be out soon on the foss.in site.

Here’s the original announcement about the event at the FOSS.IN/2008 site and the first list of accepted talks and workouts here. You can read about what FOSS.in is here. Besides the session, I will be looking forward to meeting the localization teams from India, the community leaders and active contributors and of course attending their sessions as well.

In case you plan to be around in the town somewhere in that period, do drop in and help spread the message about Sahana!!

I code for SAHANA. Do you?

Posted in Events, GSoC 2008, Sahana | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

/me is now a “Sahana Core Team Member”

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Ajay Kumar

Day before yesterday when I woke up and checked my email, which is the first thing I do usually as my laptop is always on :P , found a mail from Chamindra on behalf of the Sahana Project Management Committee inviting me to become the core committer :)

That is some awesome news to read and start your day with! I was totally excited for the privilege offered to me! :)

So now I am a core member, a new addon to my Sahana contributions: Contributor, Localization Team, Developer.

Sure the Spider man rightly said “With great power, comes great responsibilites”

See what I am talking about here.

Thank You to Sahana PMC and team members for the encouragement. I will look forward to make ongoing contributions to the project in all possible ways I can :)

I code for SAHANA. Do you?

Posted in GSoC 2008, Sahana | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Sahana localisation sprint on 1st November @ Sarai.

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Ajay Kumar

Event: Sahana Localisation Sprint

Place: Sarai, New Delhi. or #sahana on Freenode

Primary Objective/Agenda: Review and complete Hindi Translations of Sahana. [Other language translators expected to join in too]

Date: 1st November, 2008.

Time: 11 AM to 6 PM.

Check the Mailing list for discussion on the topic here.

Join in and contribute to Sahana :-)

I code for SAHANA. Do you?

Posted in Events, Sahana | Tagged , | Leave a comment