Arabeyes' Website in Arabic

Maybe it will happen after all :-) With the help of Mohammed Elzubeir, I managed to implement gettext in the PHP code. Here's a screenshot as a proof of concept (there's actually only one translated string which is written in Latin characters...).

Next thing to do is to wrap all the displayed texts within a gettext() call, create .po files then translate them. It will also be necessary to take care of the right-to-left layout and ultimately the database content.

Happy Birthday Arabeyes!

Update (8:45) OK, here's a far better screenshot ;-)

They Killed Them

So, those fanatic idiots have killed the two Algerian diplomats, Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine Belkadi. May they both rest in peace.

Those fanatic idiots decided that they are the last genuine Muslims on Earth and that you can only be with them or against them. Being with them means believing in their political and religious crap. Being against them means having no right to live. I think it's about time that Arabs and Muslims throughout the World should stop finding justifications to these barbarian acts. People are dying in Iraq by tens every day. This is no resistance. Westerners who, in majority, somehow discovered the fanatical terrorism fact on September 11th, 2001 should also remember that the first victims were, are and sadly will continue to be Muslims in the first place. Terrorists killed tens of thousands in Algeria during a decade, long before the attacks on the World Trade Center. The terrorists ultimate goal is to create a complete chaos in which they'll recruit young or not-so-young angry people by hundreds and by thousands. Just let's all be wiser than them.

I was not very surprised to hear an inhabitant of Sharm El Sheikh saying following the attacks there that those who did it just could not be Egyptians. I already heard that before, many times. People cannot believe and reject the idea that the perpetrators may be their co-citizens, their neighbors or even their brothers. But no, stupidity is universal and does not need a visa to cross borders. The people who killed in Algeria were Algerian, bombing the places where they were raised, cutting the throats of their brothers, opening the bellies of their pregnant sisters and putting their babies in ovens. The minute they decided that the others had no right to live, everything was possible.

Nothing can justify the killing of the innocent. We cannot accept this or watch it continue to happen on and on.

The Gunslinger

I finished reading today the first book of the Dark Tower series. I read many books by Stephen King and he kept promoting this series, with references to it in a way or another... In the books I read, this was in Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, and in a (good) novel in Everything's Eventual. And if I remember well, it was in Desperation too. So, I imagine I just fell into the trap.

The author says in the introduction that he wanted to create his own fantasy universe right after finishing Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, although he had to put it on hold because at that time he was 19 and still too much arrogant. He also says that he was influenced by Sergio Leone's The Bad, the Good and the Ugly and especially by the characters played by Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. King says in the foreword that going through that first book while working on the final volumes made him realize how badly it was written and made him review some parts of it. I just can't tell if this is supposed to be modesty, false modesty or simply the truth.

I acknowledge that some small parts of the book are kind-of difficult to read and sometimes boring. However, the book is globally interesting and gripping. I indeed recognized some of the atmosphere present in Sergio Leone's westerns, an atmosphere that I really appreciate. I think I'll read the following books, at least to know the details, although I don't know when.

Yeah, I already said that I fell into the trap...

Bias?

I had Yoda in mind before starting the survey... I was probably biased ;-)

"A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light."

Embed PHP in Perl or in Python

I wrote two scripts in order to put some life into the Arabeyes website, mainly in order to create and update RSS feeds with the latest CVS commits and the latest mailing lists posts. Those two feeds can then be displayed on the front page to give it a more interactive shape (and as I'm posting this, I'm asking myself why not do the same with the Planet? The feed is already there and all ;-)). As I had no real preference for a language or another, and I wanted to learn more about both, I wrote one script, ml2rss.pl, in Perl and the other, cvs2rss.py, in Python.

While writing the Python one, I became aware that I was re-writing a lot of the code that was already there, used in many other Python scripts that we use for administration. So, I did an attempt to regroup all of that common code in the aelib module. It is not complete yet, as there is at least another function that could be there too: this one sends notification emails and is used in different ways in cvs_log.py and checkuser.py. I did not do the same with the Perl scripts (yet), and won't probably do it in the near future.

However, I wanted to go even further: what we do in those scripts is mainly dealing with the MySQL database. It just happens that we already implemented all those functions (and more) in PHP, in the website code. Then why not simply use the PHP code rather then re-inventing the wheel in Perl and Python? Wrapping PHP in Perl or Python is what I had in mind.

I did some very quick googling and the results were disappointing. The most interesting one was this module for Perl. But it is nonetheless quite basic... I don't plan to spend more time on that for now. Probably the obvious thing would be to use one day a single language for the website and the admin scripts...

Arabeyes Celebrates its 4th Anniversary

On the 29th of July, Arabeyes will be 4 years old :-) As usual, the celebration party will be the occasion to talk about the project and to try to refine our future's plans. However, unlike the 2 latest parties, this one will be shorter and less pompous. It's even utterly astonishing that there'll be a party at all! If not for the efforts of Nadim Shaikli who, as usual, cared enough to plan it.

I hope there'll be enough people that'll show up, as this is the occasion for everybody to make their voices heard. I don't really believe at all that Arabeyes is on auto pilot. It's still in need for the 'Core Team' to take care and manage almost all the important things. For instance, even on the mailing lists, a lot of posts are simply ignored if not an answer from a Core Team's member. Mailing lists should be animated by those who are subscribed to it, and should need intervention from moderators very rarely.

I already posted some thoughts on how we could re-ignite motivation and make volunteers care more about the project, mainly by concentrating on PR. I can add to that the importance of having our website translated to Arabic, though I'm fully aware of the issues (technical and non-technical) inherent to it. I just hope others will join and give their opinion on this highly important issue.

Inauguration

It has been a long time since I was first tempted to create my own blog, mostly because of Planet Arabeyes :-) I finally decided to start it when I came only today morning across the front page of Blogger. Yup, you have already guessed, I'm not a very regular blogs reader, though I like to hop from blog to blog occasionally. In spite of that, I read the posts on Planet Arabeyes almost at a daily basis.

So, for the near future, I'll probably talk exclusively about Arabeyes, Bayani, Open Source, Linux, C++ and related topics, since this is the main reason I'm starting to blog in the first place ;-) But I'll try to speak about other subjects that may - hopefully - interest you, readers of this blog.

As for the language of the posts, I'll try to post in Arabic, French and English, depending on the topic. And for now, it'll be hosted on Blogger, but maybe it'll end up in a website of its own, depending on how things will evolve. Who knows ?