ITWALES.COM - Welsh Linux on the cards

Posted: Mon, July 21, 2003

Welsh Linux on the cards

By Basheera Khan

An Anglesey-based programmer is spearheading the creation of a Welsh version of the Linux operating system and its applications. Kevin Donnelly established KGyfieithu in February this year, with the goal of translating the KDE and Gnome desktop environments into Welsh in time for the National Eisteddfod in August.

With the help of Welsh speakers around the country, it's hoped that the initial results will ship with KDE and Gnome by the end of 2003. itwales.com recently spoke to Donnelly for an update on the latest developments.

ITW: How many people are currently contributing to KGyfieithu, and can you give me an idea of their distribution around the country and the world?

KD: The Hall of Fame lists 22 (not including me!), and there are of course other people who are also doing one-off files on their own PCs, rather than through KGyfieithu. Most are probably located in Wales, although a couple are in England. Agewise, most are probably in their 20s/30s (quite a few are students, especially on the Gnome side), but a few (eg me!) are older, and I know that a couple of 12-year olds (Steff, Kadi) have translated stuff - I find that very heartening. Originwise, contributions seem to be fairly even between those originally from the North and those originally from the South.

All this, of course, is fairly vague, since we don't maintain detailed info about contributors. People working on other projects (eg Rhoslyn Prys - OpenOffice.org, Dewi Jones - Mozilla) have kindly allowed us access to translations they have already done, even though they are not actual KGyfieithu contributors, and these are embodied (with our own translations) in Omnivore (the online dictionary). So one of the main benefits of KGyfieithu as I see it is to integrate and leverage work being done across the board on Welsh desktop software, and given that the project was only announced in February this year, I think there is scope for building up even greater momentum ... behind the first freely available Welsh desktop.

ITW: Are there any computing bodies or organisations contributing to the project at all, or is it entirely the work of interested individuals?

KD: Not at the minute - all the work to date on KGyfieithu has been done by volunteers (as indeed most of the work on the KDE and Gnome desktops, and Linux itself, is). It is possible to argue that contributions to this sort of project by the private and public sectors would allow them to offer a Welsh desktop at no cost in license fees, and would therefore be very good value for money, but this argument will only begin to bite once more people switch to Linux on the desktop, as they will do over the next three years, and begin to generate license fee savings. So in the meantime the voluntary way forward seems the most viable one.

ITW: From the progress reports on your website, it appears that the KDE translation is proceeding at a quicker rate than that for Gnome. What is the reason for this?

KD: This isn't really the case. The difference is due to the fact that I am the KDE Welsh language co-ordinator, so I commit the files to the KDE tree immediately. The Gnome files are sent to Telsa Gwynne, who checks them over before committing them to the Gnome tree, so there's a short time lag.

ITW: You mention the goal of having a viable Welsh desktop running in time to launch it at the National Eisteddfod. Based on the progress thus far, do you think you will achieve this goal?

KD: We already have :-) The screenshots on the site show various items in Welsh, and the PC at which I am typing this has large chunks of its interface in Welsh. The desktop is a very different proposition from an individual application - with the latter, you translate all the strings, and it's all in Welsh (as with the music sequencer, Rosegarden, whose details are on the site); with the former, everything is interconnected, and it's BIG, so even if you translate quite a few files, not everything may appear in Welsh.

That may dismay some people, and it was the main reason for splitting things into sub-projects - that way you can report milestones without losing track of the wider goal. I think being able to get parts done and dusted is a great morale-booster, and it's best to think of it as putting another brick in the wall. I noticed a big jump between KG/100 and Basecamp in the amount of Welsh I saw in the interface - I would say that about 40% is in Welsh now (the amount is higher than the 19% on the site because those files are the most often used pieces, so their translations crop up in the interface again and again.)

ITW: What will you be working on for the next sub-project?

KD: We're not entirely sure yet (but we'll make a final decision in a couple of days). We may decide to fill out a few of the essential files, but more likely we'll concentrate on the PIM (personal information management) items, e.g. the KMail mail client (which is a major part of the upcoming KDE Kolab suite), or Evolution (an important Gnome package which provides an MS Outlook-like interface to PIM).

ITW: How many sub-projects do you estimate there will be during the lifetime of the project?

KD: The way things are going now, I think there'll probably be a total of around 15 sub-projects - obviously, the more input we get, the faster those can be completed. The speed with which Basecamp was done was great!

ITW: What's your background, and what do you do when you're not working on KGyfieithu?

KD: I'm originally from Northern Ireland. I have a doctorate in African languages, and I worked for 10 years in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (equivalent of the Treasury there) in various budgetary, management and IT posts. I gave up work so that I could look after my kids, and we moved to Llanfairpwll (Anglesey) when my wife became a consultant anaesthetist in Ysbyty Gwynedd.

Once there, I set up a community group and led fund-raising and building of a new play-area and a new Ysgol Feithrin PPA building. I was also involved part-time with Menter Mon on their telematics projects.

Since 2000, I've done part-time consultancy on web development (with emphasis on PHP and MySQL to develop web-based apps), and small office systems using Linux.

Contacts

KGyfieithu
Web: http://www.kyfieithu.co.uk

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