Michal Čihař - Archive for 1/2013

As there is still some development ongoing in Weblate, it's time to share information about some of the features you can expect in upcoming release.

Recently, Weblate gained ability to display changes which caused string to be fuzzy. This currently only works with Gettext PO files as no other format provides this information. If this is available Weblate shows differences between current and previous string, what allows translator to easily spot what has been changed. Example can be seen on Uzbek translation of phpMyAdmin (until somebody translates that).

While working on this feature, I've realized, that Django does not include this information in PO files. Fortunately it was pretty easy to fix and I've created a pull request to implement this. Looking at this file made me fix another thing which annoyed me since I've used translations in Django for first time - it generates POT file for every language, making the updates really slow. Fortunately it was also easy to fix and pull request is here. So if you feel makemessages is too slow, this is patch for you.

But back to Weblate as there are more changes. For example automatic locking now works more fine grained and uses AJAX to update lock period. This means translation will be unlocked much faster if you close browser with Weblate.

Also searching for messages has been updated to include substring search as well as it is sometimes more useful than fulltext search.

Finally, I've found some time to update phpMyAdmin packages in Debian to 3.5 series. For long it was not possible due to licensing reasons, but recently this issue was resolved upstream by using jqPlot instead of Highcharts.

While packaging new version, I've also replaced all embedded libraries to use corresponding packages from Debian. I've done some testing and everything seems to work fine, but still this frightens me as some versions are slightly different than upstream.

Anyway new version is available in experimental for now. Ubuntu users can get it from phpMyAdmin PPA.

Tento víkend budeme poprvé volit prezidenta v České republice ve volbách. Napsáno k tomu již bylo mnohé, ale výsledek bude podobný jako to obvykle ve většinových volbách bývá - v druhém kole bude spousta lidí volit menší zlo místo toho aby vybírali kandidáta, který jim opravdu vyhovuje.

Většinový systém bohužel takto funguje - podle dosavadních průzkumů to vypadá, že do druhého kola postoupí kandidáti s podporou přibližně čtvrtiny voličů, což není mnoho. Samozřejmě to předpokládá, že průzkumy se budou přibližovat reálnému výsledku, což v posledních volbách moc neplatilo. (Pokud by se někomu dosavadní výsledky průzkumů nelíbily, doporučuji Volební průzkum serveru Žít Česko).

Dá se ale prezident volit jinak, než většinovým systémem? Možné to určitě je, existují totiž i preferenční systémy, kde volič určí pořadí v jakém mu kandidáti vyhovují a výsledkem je jediný kandidát (případně pořadí kandidátů), který je preferovaný před jakýmkoliv jiným. Jedním z příkladů může být Schulzova metoda, která se používá v mnoha organizacích, nejdéle asi v Debianu, kde se takto každý rok volí vedení.

Nicméně očekávat, že by byl zaveden nějaký spravedlivější volební systém je naivní. Pro politiky by to znamenalo, že volič může volit bez obav, že jeho hlas "propadne", a tím by klesly šance mediálně silných kandidátů. Navíc sčítání takovýchto volebních lístků je značně komplikovanější (pokud se bavíme o volbách v papírové podobě, elektronicky to samozřejmě problém není).

Když už to tady popisuji, tak můj volební lístek by v tomto případě vypadal nějak takto:

1. Franz Vladimír Prof. JUDr.
2. Schwarzenberg Karel
3. Fischerová Taťana
4. Roithová Zuzana MUDr. MBA
5. Sobotka Přemysl MUDr.
6. Fischer Jan Ing. CSc.
7. Dienstbier Jiří
8. Bobošíková Jana Ing.
9. Zeman Miloš Ing.

PS: Pokud se divíte proč je Miloš Zeman až na konci, dovolím si připomenout jeden dokument České televize.

I've just confirmed my flight and hotel bookings for FOSDEM 2013, so I'm looking to meet all great people there again.

This year my schedule is not that packed as I have no talks (Weblate lightning talk was not accepted) and also there will be no big phpMyAdmin team meeting, so get in touch if you want to discuss anything with me.

As most of the rooms still don't have a schedule, I can't give you hint where I will be present, but I definitely won't miss Friday beer event and Dieter's talk about phpMyAdmin in MySQL room. The rest pretty much depends on who I will meet :-).

Year 2013 has just started and it's time to think how to spend my free time during this year.

Weblate

Weblate was my toy project number one in last year and I expect it to stay for next year as well. I have several ideas for new features, but all that depends on free time. I will most likely spend my hackweek on that as well.

phpMyAdmin

I think my involvement will stay at about same level at phpMyAdmin - doing few random bugfixes, mostly security ones, taking care of infrastructure for translations and wiki and mentoring few GSoC students.

Gammu and Wammu

Gammu and Wammu has not seen much activity from me in past year and it will probably not change. I don't use the program anymore and this pretty much limits my interest in adding new features. In case somebody active will pop up on mailing list, I'd be happy to transfer the project ownership.

Mobile apps

I'd like to make some progress here, I was also thinking about making some of them working on Android as well, but this involves lot of learning and time is always an issue here. Anyway this might be good challenge for hackweek as well.

Debian

No changes expected here :-).

Others

I consider pretty much anything else from my software projects abandoned or finished.