[Freecats-Dev] Free CATS project roadmap - Server development

[Henri Chorand]

Hi,

Some may have noted I was (as well as other Free CATS team members) very
eager to elect our first client software, which we would very much like
to be a portable one.

Now that Yves has clearly expressed his decision and showed his interest
(and skills) in helping us develop our server, we can be confident about
the following:

1) Free CATS TM server WILL be built. This project, which I started 2
months ago, will succeed: building up a server will be enough, at least
for a start, because Wordfast will be our first compatible client (and a
nice one, even if it's not a free software product).

Given this situation, we can be confident that we will then be able to
attract other free software projects and expand the number of compatible
tools, whatever their status, their environment, etc.

Even if the present team was hopeless for coding (it's not the case even
if we are not as strong as we might wish), we can consider that with the
help which will, hopefully, come from ENSTB, we WILL be able to code our
server. I believe we'll be able to make at least an alpha version in the
3 or 4 next months.

As long as we had not established a cooperation with one or more
translation client team, we were risking to scatter our efforts in too
many directions (clients of various types and server, coding/looking for
help, etc.) Now we can be assured our efforts will lead somewhere and
concentrate on the server module.

KBabel, like several other CAT projects of interest, may not be our
ideal, all-purpose client, but nevertheless, we'll take the time to hear
what they want to tell us in terms of needs/features/whatever and will
do our best to provide a universal TM server, on top of which many
projects, whether free or proprietary, will grow. So, I want to thank
Stanislav for his kind, quick & efficient feedback, which helped us
assess KBabel project, and is certainly interested in seeing a GPL'ed TM
server project coming into existence.

I feel confident this will remain true with other projects: OmegaT,
poEdit, etc.

That way, every team will concentrate on their main aim (it would be
foolish to expect Stanislav or any other developer to build our server
for us) and will exchange ideas, so that Free CATS server will benefit
from this feedback and evolve in a full-fledged product, even if it
starts with an alpha, proof-of-concept version.

Also, Free CATS project team has to freely determine which language,
tools and technologies they want to use. I proposed Python because it's
a realistic choice considering our skills.

If, at a later stage, others volunteer to give us new modules written in
other languages, we know Python IS, like Tcl, a good option for
integrating them. Similarly, if one day, some developers want to rewrite
modules in other, better-performing languages, it can happen smoothly
and successfully.

Even before we begin coding, other developers can greatly help us by
reviewing our specification documents (the "Many Eyes" concept) and
bringing up new ideas. I'm sure some of them will.

In order to begin coding, the project team members will need to download 
and set up various software modules which I'm going to detail in another 
e-mail.


Henri