Re: Guadec on spanish newspaper

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

PeTaZeTa wrote:
> 
> I read this article (in spanish) It's the spanish more important
> newspaper.


Babelfished for your reading pleasure  :)


PEDRO OF ALZAGA 

Mexican the Icaza and Mena exposed the new features of graphical
surroundings GNOME, a program that facilitates the use of the opened
operating system 

More than 400 people of the five continents they take a walk by the
School
of Superior Engineers of Seville. It is III the European Congress of
Users
and Programmers of GNOME (GUADEC, in its English abbreviations). 

English, Italian, American, Pakistanis, Chinese Spaniards... all share
space in the island of the Cartuja to speak on their main liking: to
design a
program that the austere one replaces and críptico interface of Linux
by
graphical surroundings that can be handled with windows, icons and
mouse. A subject that seems simple, but that it supposes a great
challenge 

Latin technology 

Unlike other famous pairs of the history of computer science - like
Gates
and Allen (Microsoft), Jobs and Wozniak (Apple), or Yang and Filo
(Yahoo) - Mexican Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena represent a new
form to understand the technology. 

Both display a Latin pragmatismo that takes to them not to try to
reinventar the wheel. ' If something works, why to change it ', Icaza is
asked. 

Both scorn slogans against their competitors. ' Windows does not have of
being so bad, if my mother and my grandma are able of usarló, she
assures
Mena. The objective of Icaza and Mena is to program so that the result
of
their work is good, pretty and, mainly, easy to use. ' Something that we
shared all those that we are in projected, Icaza says. 

The only subject in that they are inflexible and that never they would
imitate of his competitors refers the philosophy that governs the
evolution
of its program and other so many of free the Software movement:
GNOME has to be opened, so that anyone can copy it whichever times
wants, give it to a friend or modify it as it comes to him in desire.
And in
this there are no exceptions. 

' you have still not seen the last writing-desk of GNOME ', Icaza with
certain tone of incredulity asks. 

Any moment it is good to throw a look to the work, after even finished
the
second day of congress, so the Mexican flame to the companions in
charge of the design and requests a demonstration to them. 

The American Tuomas Kuosmanen and the Czech Jakub Steiner remove
a laptop from the knapsack and, there same, seated in a bank of the
reception of the School, they show proud its last 

One is a writing-desk in which the size of the icons can be changed
independently of other ' Why all the icons must be of the same size ',
Icaza
is asked. ' the folders, the icons of the programs or the wastebasket
can
have different sizes, according to the importance that grants usuarió
to
them. 

But not only the graphical aspect has deserved the attention of the
assistants to the GUADEC, organized by the Association for the
Development and the Advance of Free Software in Andalusia (ADALA),
the Association of Spanish Users of GNU/Linux (Hispalinux) and the
Gnome Foundation, of which some of the most staunch rivals of Microsoft
comprise, like IBM and Sun Microsystems. 

In Seville opinions have been able to be listened to on the handling
facility
(famous usability , in English), the access of the discapacitados ones
(conference distributed by a invidente), the applications multimedia or
the
internal operation of GNOME. Altogether, more than half hundred of
conferences dedicated to this surroundings. 


' geeks' calls to the revolution 

Daniel Pisano, an Italian of 28 years settled down in Germany, has
shouted
' Coarse '. In its conference geeks, between the death by starvation and
the domination of the world exposed the problems which a community of
people faces that, according to him, is operated by the society. For
Pisano,
geek is an individual equipped for the use of the technology, but that
is not
dedicated professionally to her; a person whom the others take advantage
of without pudor. ' You which you know of computers, arréglame this
problem '... ' Why you want to receive to me, if for you it is a game of
children ' they are phrases that hold these blessed ones of computer
science. In order to solve this, Pisano proposes the revolution. It
tries to
create a community that supports to its members and it helps them to
negotiate with his orerators (generally, known friends, neighbors and).
The
Italian admires the only document that has found on this subject: a
Spanish
text that is located in Google with the words ' Pringao-howtó that
explains
how to recognize geeks and relates its eventful journeys. 


-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems