[Freecats-Dev] Interface/vote

[Dave Simons]

> So the idea is, would it not be quicker to begin by implementing
> translation client features from within Open Office, in a way similar to
> what Trados and Wordfast do from within MS Word?

Well, you asked for a vote and I haven't seen any being cast yet so here's 
what I say.
I'm wearing my pure professional translator's hat here and I'm thinking in 
personal rather than project terms. Remember, translators want to see some 
benefit for themselves and consistency is probably not the main issue for them.

1) However hard a pill it is to swallow, 75% of all translation work is 
going to be done on wintel for a long time to come, and more specifically, 
on MS word. An MS Office interface should be among the first priorities. If 
Y.C's interface (which works on all MS office documents not just Word) gets 
that problem out of the way then let's go for it if he's willing. 
Proprietary and open source can go hand in hand and I don't mind paying a 
justifiable price.

2) Re:1. If we're going to wean customers off MS Office (* see below), and 
I really don't see any realistic alternative to OOo/Star Office at present, 
then we'd better not let Trados get to critical mass otherwise the job will 
be ten times as hard since I can't see them making an OOo version. Trados 
is defacto at the moment but not irreversibly so. Once we have our MS 
interface we need that OOo interface quickly too so we can go one up on 
Trados. Might this create a conflict of interests for Yves and Wordfast? or 
might Yves look the possibility of porting WF to OOo too?

Once these two interfaces are out of the way, then yes, a stand-alone 
interface would be great (read "indispensable"), especially for html/xml 
and perhaps other stuff too. It's interesting to note that Abiword uses an 
XML-like file format so that should be easy to cater for with our XML-aware 
interface.

* OOo filters/converters for MS Word are not perfect because OOo is working 
blind, and customers are notorious for using the weirdest possible 
combinations of MS Word functions in their documents (text-boxes within 
embedded documents anyone?). Having said that, an awful lot of ".doc" 
documents (50%?) can be converted without too much hassle to .rtf and I 
think that's the best line of attack since it's not a moving target. That 
leaves one big problem of course, namely .pdf files. Try as I may I can't 
see any way round that problem. They're simply TM-proof. They throw away 
the entire document structure to replace it with a graphic structure (when 
the text isn't already an image itself, i.e., .pdf = fax).

Dave