Over the last few weeks we have maintained a healthy state of GNOME 2.22 translation to Arabic, thanks to Anas Husseini, Abou Manal, Ahmad Farghal, Osama Khayat and Khaled Hosny. Currently we have 95% done and we are at the third spot. Detailed statistics are listed below, and here is a link to the official GNOME statistics:

http://l10n.gnome.org/releases/gnome-2-22
The new modules for the next release have been settled, and the strings are more or less finalised, except for a few changes in the future. So, time to switch our focus to this release and get it done as soon as possible.

I have been quiet busy in the last few week with fixing various RTL and Arabic bugs in GNOME. Expect a few fixes in the next release. I will continue on this work so unfortunately I won’t have much time for translation.

It would be very good if we could complete this release as soon as possible. I would like to dedicate the last 2 weeks before the release to strict Quality Assurance and Translation Revision. I have built the whole new GNOME from sources and so I expect to test and review most translations.

Please feel free to assign yourself any of the uncompleted packages in this list, and let me know what you have taken.

* Translated    39311 95.42%
* Fuzzy          1271 3.09%
* Untranslated    615 1.49%

* Total         41197
* To be done     1886 4.58%

Incomplete Packages
--------------------
Package                 Translated Fuzzy Untranslated
eel                       30         0    1
libgnomekbd               49         0    1
nautilus                1161         1    0
metacity                 514         1    2
gnome-applets-locations 4355         3    0
gnome-terminal           483         3    0
gnome-desktop             65         0    5
gnome-applets            939         5    0
epiphany                 909         5    1
gnome-session            122         6    1
gtk -properties         1501         6    1
gnome-volume-manager     196         8    0
evince                   287         3    6
gtk-engines               32         4    6
cheese                    45         5    5
file-roller              249         7    3
sound-juicer             156         8    6
gnome-build              110         7   10
gnome-system-tools       231        11    6
evolution-data-server   1026        14    3
gtk                      908        16    1
gnome-utils              723        10    9
gnome-system-monitor     210         8   12
vino                      84         8   12
ekiga                    632        11   10
gconf                    453        24    0
eog                      245         8   17
gnome-keyring             59        16   15
totem                    426        22    9
tomboy                   355        24    9
gnome-power-manager      443        36    3
deskbar-applet           186        16   24
libgnome                 215        40    0
seahorse                 727        37    6
empathy                  266         7   37
gnome-control-center     829        41    9
gimmie                   122        40   13
yelp                     289        29   30
gdm                       66        51   15
gtksourceview            273        62   17
gdl                       17        48   33
gnome-games             1684        49   37
gcalctool                303        72   27
anjuta                  1853        80   32
orca                     924        63   52
glib                     215        56   68
gvfs                       0       149   29
evolution               4664       151   32

A while back I was interviewed by Leonardo Fontenelle (An active Free Software l10n contributor from Brazil), it is worth mentioning here. There, I described many aspects of our work in Arabic translation and Arabeyes. Here I quote some passages:

On the open nature of the translation process:

I guess I don’t like some particular phase per see, but all in all, I very much adore the open nature of it. Right from the source code to the actual compiled message catalogues. You can’t really get much more open that this. This openness really pays off when translating weird messages, when trying to view translations live, when comparing with translations of other packages, when viewing translations of different languages, etc.

On the Technical Dictionary:

The technical dictionary is basically an English-Arabic dictionary for computing terms. At first, we started making it with .po files, but that created many problems with versioning and discussing the terms. So I had the idea of uploading the terms to our Wiki. I used some scripts to convert the .po files to Wiki xml input. The wiki, being open, allows people to edit as they see fit, discuss terms, suggest alternatives, etc. Then finally, there are some scripts that take the wiki pages and convert them back to .po files, as well as .pdf suitable for printing/reading. The experience was very rewarding to us.

On contributors:

Time for a blatant me me post.

Finally my application to the Gnome Foundation has been accepted, I am now an official Gnome Foundation Member!

Finally Arabic Gnom 2.16 has been fully translated to Arabic, thanks to a dedicated team of translators.

See statistics!

We will be emphasising more on quality and correctness for gnome 2.18, since most of the job is already done. Some details are available in this Wiki page.

Minbar, the Gnome Prayer Application is finally done. This first release does the Athan call (prayer call) and notifies before the time of the prayer. It uses ITL for prayer calculation, which has a high level of accuracy. It is initially available in Arabic, English and French.

Download the source tarball from here. You need a few libraries to build it, the enclosed README lists them. If you have any problems, I will be happy to know about them. There is a debian .deb to be released soon for debian derived distributions. If you can package this for your own distribution that would be great!

This screenshot shows it with its tray icon (the Kaaba shaped icon). Click for a larger version.

Many thanks to Abderrahim Kitouni and Mohammed Adnène Trojette for the great help!

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NOTE: It has come to my attention that many people are being redirect here from Google for Minbar. The latest about Minbar is available in this entry: Minbar.

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Gnome is sorely missing Islamic/Arabic applications. There has been some attempts in the distant past, like a gnome applet called “akemsalatak” (cool name). Unfortunaly it won’t build, and I have not been able to establish contact with its maintainer.So here is a new Gnome Prayer Application. It is still very much a work in progress, I welcome any suggestions or contributions. The code resides in Arabeyes CVS here.

One of the cool libraries it uses it libglade. Libglade makes GUI’s so easy to make it’s almost a sin. The application uses gstreamer for Athan playback, and libitl (the Arabeyes islamic tools) to calculate the times.

Pre-Beta screenshot:

UPDATE: Minbar 0.1 has been released, please bookmark this link for the latest details: Minbar

The Gnome Arabic Team is making serious progress to complete Gnome 2.16 translation. We are a bit late due to lack of contributors, but many joined the team recently, so better late than never.

Arabic is a beautiful language, I’m sure you will agree by looking at these screenshots of translated applications. Thanks to all those who helped: Khaled Hosny, Youcef Raffah, Youssef Chahibi, Mohamed Magdy, and all those who translated previous version: Arafat Medini, Bayazidi, and a lot more. I would like to take this chance to extend my invitation to all past contributors and new members: You are always welcome, there is a lot you can do to help the effort: a lot of people are waiting for the release. If you would like to help, please have a look at this roadmap, then email me at djihed at djihed.com

Now, here are the screenshots, click to enlarge:

Gedit: Now becomes the best Arabic Linux Text editor:

Epiphany: The gorgeous Gnome Internet Browser:

Ekiga: the Internet telephony software:

Eye of Gnome: The image viewer:

And last but not least, file-roller, the archive manager: