Re: [gnome-cy] Awareness Day notes

[Rhoslyn Prys <rhoslyn prys ntlworld com>]

Telsa Gwynne wrote:

> Brief summary of the Linux Awareness Days from a software-in-Welsh
> point of view.
>
> First off, I have never attended one of these before. I don't
> know whether we should be pleased or depressed about the numbers.
> Less than a hundred, certainly, but counted in dozens rather
> than single people.
>
> We had a machine running RH 9.0 with the latest translations
> of Gnome on it and as much other free software in Welsh as we
> could find. Every time I came back to the machine I kept
> finding another instance of Abiword open :) We stuck a 
> browser pointed at Google in Welsh and at Kyfieithu on it too. 
>
> Several people asked about it specifically, and several others
> just came across it as they moved along from machine to machine.
>
> We got:
>  * interest :) 
>  * several people who are on this list already (say hello :)) 
>  * several people who had never been able to find any Welsh
> software at all.
>  * lots of interest in Kyfieithu, and a few surprised faces
> at Google in Welsh. 
>  * someone showing up on the IRC channel the one day we were
> all away at this. How typical :) 
>
> Things I noticed from chatting to people (Daf and Chris and 
> Alan probably got different impressions from other people).
> Note that when I say "a lot" and so on, the sample size was
> rather small. So I don't know how typical the remarks were.
>
> Interest: people who spoke Welsh were (naturally?) more
> interested, but there was interest from non-Welsh speakers
> too. The guy on the IRC channel seemed particularly interested:
> he was actively asking where he could get hold of things to
> test. 
>
> Not many people knew about much Welsh software at all. I
> am used to people not knowing about free software, and I 
> can do a reasonable two-sentence "This is what free software
> is about" intro by now. But a lot of people were surprised
> to hear that there had ever been any Welsh Windows stuff, even.
> One person had seen one version of Windows in Welsh which
> he said was only half-translated, but he wasn't sure what
> version it was. And that was it, pretty much. This surprised
> me a great deal. No-one mentioned other sites, other projects,
> and so on. People were even surprised to see Google in Welsh. 
>
> We really should have taken flyers along with references to
> sites where people could find such things. Next time, I shall
> definitely do that. 
>
> That said, we got a few interesting suggestions and our
> first genuine user feedback (woo!) I remember Rhoslyn
> some time ago saying that he changed a number of Opera strings 
> in response to feedback (people thought longer forms of verbs 
> were friendlier, I think?) We had some along those lines: I 
> remember one discussion about "bas ddata"/"cronfa", for example. 
> I shall leave that to Dafydd to explain, I think.
>
> We also realised that we have no idea whether anyone is
> _using_ this stuff, and that we need a way for people who
> are using it to provide feedback easily. (The visitor on
> IRC is probably our first "user in the wild", so to speak.
> We did think of making him a badge :))
>
> It was interesting to hear where people thought there would
> be interest in Welsh desktops. For some people, it is "for
> me". But there were also suggestions of other groups who
> might be interested: councils, education departments, community 
> projects, and public institutions such as the National Library.
>
> A couple of people wanted URLs, and said they'd be visiting
> Kyfieithu again to help. 
>
> Telsa
>
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>
>  
Diolch yn fawr Telsa

Mae na lot o waith i'w wneud i dynnu sylw at feddalwedd Cymraeg - bydd 
na gyfle yn yr Eisteddfod ac wrth lansio OpenOffice, pan fydd hwnnw'n 
barod. Falch o glywed am y diddordeb yn Abiword...

Rhos


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