Asgeir Frimannsson

Using JAXB annotated classes with GWT and maven

2010-04-28T09:41:00.000+10:00

When compiling GWT projects that make use of classes with JAXB annotations it typically works fine within the IDE, as you have the JDK source code available to the compiler. However, running the GWT compiler on the same project from e.g. maven or ant will fail since the JAXB annotations are not part of default java types understood by GWT. In a maven-based GWT project you can fix this by adding the following dependency within your POM file:

<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.xml.bind</groupId>
  <artifactId>jaxb-api</artifactId>
  <version>2.2</version>
  <classifier>sources</classifier>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Configuring Maven-based GWT projects for Eclipse

2009-10-31T10:32:00.000+10:00

When developing with GWT and maven in Eclipse, you don't get the benefits of the Google Eclipse Plugin by default, as maven and the Maven GWT plugin doesn't configure your Eclipse project settings to work with the GWT plugin. Here's how I changed my POM file to configure the Eclipse project correctly:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-eclipse-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <additionalProjectnatures>
          <projectnature>com.google.gwt.eclipse.core.gwtNature</projectnature>
        </additionalProjectnatures>
        <additionalBuildcommands>
          <buildcommand>com.google.gwt.eclipse.core.gwtProjectValidator</buildcommand>
        </additionalBuildcommands>
        <classpathContainers>
          <classpathContainer>org.eclipse.jdt.launching.JRE_CONTAINER</classpathContainer>
          <classpathContainer>com.google.gwt.eclipse.core.GWT_CONTAINER</classpathContainer>
        </classpathContainers>
        <excludes>
          <!-- These are provided by the GWT container -->
          <exclude>com.google.gwt:gwt-user</exclude>
          <exclude>com.google.gwt:gwt-dev</exclude>
        </excludes>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

If you're using GWT 1.x or earlier snapshots of GWT 2.0 you'll have to replace gwt-dev with gwt-dev-${platform}.

Now, when running mvn eclipse:eclipse, the Eclipse project will use the Google GWT plugin for the core GWT dependencies.

Building Maven artifacts for GWT 2.0.0 (trunk) and GWT Incubator

2009-10-27T15:34:00.007+10:00

Update: Fixed svn url to GWT incubator.

Here's how I set up Hudson to run daily builds of the upcoming 2.0 version of GWT together with GWT Incubator:

I first set up a job 'GWT-2.0' to check out and build GWT itself. There are two repositories needed:

http://google-web-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

and
http://google-web-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/tools

Hudson then runs the following script to build GWT and deploy the maven artifacts to a local repository:

LOCAL_REPO=file:///srv/maven2
cd trunk
SVN_REV=`svn info | grep Revision | awk '{print $2}'`
GWT_VERSION=2.0.0-$SVN_REV
$ANT_HOME/bin/ant clean
$ANT_HOME/bin/ant -Dgwt.version=$GWT_VERSION

for artifact in `ls build/lib`;
do
artifact_packaging=${artifact##*.}
artifact_name=${artifact%.*}
$MAVEN_HOME/bin/mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=com.google.gwt -DartifactId=$artifact_name -Dversion=$GWT_VERSION -Dpackaging=$artifact_packaging \
-Durl=$LOCAL_REPO -DgeneratePom=true -Dfile=build/lib/$artifact
done

$MAVEN_HOME/bin/mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=com.google.gwt -DartifactId=gwt \
-Dversion=$GWT_VERSION -Dpackaging=zip -Durl=$LOCAL_REPO -DgeneratePom=true -Dfile=build/dist/gwt-$GWT_VERSION.zip

For GWT Incubator I trigger a build after each successful build of GWT. The Incubator repository is at

http://google-web-toolkit-incubator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

After checking out, hudson runs the following script to build and deploy the Maven artifact:

LOCAL_REPO=file:///srv/maven2

export GWT_TOOLS=/home/hudson/.hudson/jobs/GWT-2.0/workspace/tools
GWT_SVN_REV=`svn info /home/hudson/.hudson/jobs/GWT-2.0/workspace/trunk/| grep \
Revision | awk '{print $2}'`
GWT_VERSION=2.0.0-$GWT_SVN_REV
export GWT_HOME=/home/hudson/.hudson/jobs/GWT-2.0/workspace/trunk/build/staging/gwt-$GWT_VERSION

cd trunk
$ANT_HOME/bin/ant -Dgwt.dev.jar=$GWT_HOME/gwt-dev.jar
$MAVEN_HOME/bin/mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=com.google.gwt -DartifactId=gwt-incubator \
-Dversion=$GWT_VERSION -Dpackaging=jar -Durl=$LOCAL_REPO -DgeneratePom=true -Dfile=build/dist/gwt-incubator.jar

Agilo for Scrum Trac plugin for Fedora

2009-07-23T17:55:00.004+10:00

I have been looking around for open source Scrum and agile-related tools for a while, and today I set up an instance of Trac with the Agilo for SCRUM plugin from Agile42. This is an Apache v2-licensed plugin that converts your Trac-instance to a full Scrum-management tool, with Requirements, User Stories, Sprints and Backlogs (and so on). I'm happy with it so far, although I've only played with it for 30 minutes. Learning Scrum is a different story...

For those interested, I created an RPM out of it, and put it up together with the spec file on my fedorapeople account.

Wiretapping Open Translation Tools 09

2009-06-23T10:12:00.003+10:00

Just spent 30 minutes this morning reading content from the ongoing OTT09 event in Amsterdam through my Feed reader, mainly reading the Wiki output and the twitter messages.

Creating and sharing Mock-ups

2008-10-18T21:29:00.004+10:00

I sometimes find working within distributed teams a really tough challenge. Different time-zones, communication and language barriers. The 'disconnectedness' of distributed collaboration often ends up meaning we talk using the same terms , but have very different ideas in our minds.

So, to ease these challenges, I've started to investiage different ways in which we can improve collaboration within the projects I'm involved in, moving beyond the traditional IM/IRC, Email and phone-conferencing facilities we use every day.

When developing software, I love visual representations of ideas, such as ER diagrams, UML, and UI prototypes/mock-ups. I am a very visual thinker, and usually spend a lot of time sketching ideas on paper before implementing them in code. However, paper isn't the easiest medium for collaboration across the globe, especially when you want to mash-up and collaborate in this process. I still haven't found a good and FOSS 'sketching' tool, but must admit that I have in previous lives relied a lot on e.g. MS Visio.

Today, however, I discovered Balsamiq Mockups, a web and desktop based mockup tool based on Adobe AIR. It was easy to install on Fedora 9 (using Flash 10 and the Linux Beta of Adobe AIR). The free version won't let you save diagrams or PNG snapshots, so a lower resolution(?) screen-grab will have to do for now. It also lets you import/export diagrams as XML (even in the free version!), so it's really handy as these XML files can e.g. be stored in version control repositories and can thus easily be shared with team members. Here's a quick mock-up I did to test the application:

At some point I started missing some of the advanced layout features (e.g. modifying the values of the pie-chart), but then again, it is a mock-up and is supposed to be quick-and-sketchy!

Translation Reuse and Licensing

2008-07-08T18:59:00.004+10:00

I've been watching with great interest the recent move within Launchpad Translations (formerly known as Rosetta, the Translation Infrastructure used by Ubuntu and others) to enforce a licensing policy on translations contributed through the web-based translation tool. Basically, from the end of this month, translators will have to either agree to publish all their translations under a BSD license, or stop using Launchpad for translations.

In the past, translations were contributed under the same license as the project itself. The reason for this new direction is to be able to legally reuse translations across project and license boundaries. Up until now, showing translation suggestions from projects which had an incompatible license to the project being translated have been a rather fuzzy area.

(This is not really a new move, as the Launchpad terms of use always granted Canonical the rights to use these translations anyway.)

I personally find it rather silly (or at least counterproductive to the goal of sharing knowledge) that resource-files such as PO files are covered by the same license as source code. What I do know is that we will start to see more and more cross-project reuse of translations, so thank you Launchpad folks for taking the first steps towards sorting out some of the legal issues!

The acrobatics of community-based localisation

2008-03-15T13:54:00.003+10:00

Michael Kaplan has an interesting post discussing the perceived 'failure' of the Swahili-language version of Microsoft Office which was released in 2003. This lesson clearly shows the benefits of some level of community-input in the localisation process. I found this quote from Kaplan rather interesting:

...the job of the localizer is as important as it ever was, if not moreso -- something that can also speak against complete "community" reliance rather on making sure competent people who understand the source and target markets and can translate between them are present in sufficient numbers to do what it may well turn out to be that no educational or governmental entity, what no group of people can actually accomplish successfully on their own.

The success of community-based localisation is indeed dependent on the ability of the community to transfer the ideas and concepts present in the source-language into their own culture and language. Well, that's no different than any other community-based project, and perhaps shows some of the acrobatics involved when commercial vendors attempt to include social translation as part of their localisation workflow.

Now, if only I'd been more interested in learning languages growing up... I spend most of my childhood from age 6 to 12 in Luoland in Kenya, and spoke solid African English with a mix of Swahili, Luo and Norwegian words. Imagine that (if you can)!

XML Localisation with ITS and Gettext

2008-03-14T23:20:00.003+10:00

GNU Gettext is perhaps (ab)used more than any other localisation technology in open source software. Why not go a bit further and implement support for ITS?

XLIFF 1.2 moving towards an Oasis Standard

2008-01-19T12:47:00.000+10:00

The ballot to approve XLIFF 1.2 as an Oasis standard opened this week, and closes at the end of the month. The company I work for has already given a 'Yes' vote. I have been involved in the review of 1.2, and I'm fairly happy with the current state of the specification. The main focus now is 2.0 and there are lots of good ideas floating around.

Earlier this week, I discovered Swordfish, a new cross-platform XLIFF 1.2 translation tool from Maxprograms. The betas are freely available.

LRC Conference XII - The Localisation Research Forum

2007-10-05T15:13:00.000+10:00

Last week in September I did a talk at the annual Localisation Research Centre (LRC) conference in Dublin. The presentation-slides from the conference are now available online. I have been wanting to participate in this conference for a couple of years now, and I'm very happy that I finally made the rather long trip to Ireland this year.

Dr. Thomas Arend from Google was first out with a very interesting keynote about localisation at Google. Towards the end of his presentation he had a rather strong emphasis on the (future) role of social translation, which nicely set the theme for my talk on the role of XLIFF and related standards in community-driven translation. In the discussion time following the presentation, Peter Reynolds (Idiom and XLIFF TC) encouraged stronger participation from the participants in the future development of XLIFF. Later in the day, the "Localisation - under the Radar" sessions were particularly interesting (the "under the radar" part is clearly an Ireland phenomenon...), with talks on Keyboard development for Indic languages, and Minority Language Success with Catalan. The last session of Day 1 discussed a study on the role of visual translation interfaces. There are no Trados-like or Catalyst-like tools available as open source that allows for translating content with visual helpers such as the actual dialog or document. Clearly the conclusions of this study could only prove that this contextual information helps, and yes, it made me think about how we could develop something similar in open source localisation.

After the last session of Day 1, I was also awarded the LRC Best Scholar Award for my PhD research proposal on context-aware Translation Reuse.

Day 2 had some interesting topics as well. I especially enjoyed Tony O'Dowd's presentation on the latest features in Alchemy Catalyst. Their approach is moving from source-based localisation to binary-based localisation for e.g. help systems. Rather than creating a localisation kit from a large number of source-files, they support the binary compiled help formats, making the whole localisation process more streamlined and less error prone. I'm not convinced of the general benefit of this though, as specific tools are needed to process each binary format. But it's very interesting to see how they are going beyond simple text-based TMs, enabling 'object-based' reuse and matching.

Following an email conversation with a few of the key XLIFF TC participants, I had the opportunity to meet with Tony Jewtushenko (co-chair of the XLIFF Technical Committee) over brunch at the airport before I left Dublin. We talked about XLIFF and we discussed some of the ideas for the next incarnation of the format. I hope to contribute more actively in the development of XLIFF 2.0, ensuring the format meets the requirements we have in community-driven translation processes, and addressing many of the problems we've identified in the previous versions of XLIFF.

I also got the chance to walk around in Dublin city a bit, as I arrived two days before the conference started. Below is a slideshow from the trip.

Going mobile with the Nokia N800

2007-10-05T13:41:00.000+10:00

As part of the LRC Best Scholar Award, award sponsor con[text] gave me a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. It's not a phone, but rather a "wireless internet applicance" with a great 800x480 display, wifi, bluetooth, web-cam and an FM-radio.

And yes, it's a Linux device running the Maemo platform, with lots of great open source applications available. The device comes with a variety of software, including the Opera web browser, Skype (no video/sms) and Google Chat (with web-cam support), as well as a Media player with a variety of video/audio codecs. No calendaring application though, but there are open source alternatives (GPE Calendar) that does some synchronization with e.g. Google Calendar.

The device is not released on the Australian market, although it's available through several online stores. Free or cheap wireless access points are hard to come by in Brisbane (and in Australia in general), hence it's probably not the best market for such a gadget. Next task is to gain root access and figure out how to modify some settings. Brisbane is not in the list of locations, but I should be able to add that...

Well, I'm still happy with my 5-year-old mobile phone, and never really caught on the I-want-the-newest-gadget race, so I would never have considered buying this device in the first place. But I'm sure I'll be able to make good use of it.

Google Summer of Code: Localisation Projects

2007-04-12T19:06:00.000+10:00

There are a few interesting Localisation-related projects in this years Google Summer of Code:

An upstream-friendly l10n Web UI for Fedora - Our goal is to build a platform that will facilitate localization processes of the Fedora L10N Project and other l10n communities. I will pursue this by deploying a Web User Interface for translation statistics which will also give translators seamless access to upstream-hosted translation files. This automation will benefit both the Fedora L10N Project in terms of usability and the upstream projects in terms of translation completeness.
KAider, computer-aided translation system - A KDE4 replacement for KBabel.

I did a Google Summer of Code project with KDE in 2005, and can highly recommend the program. I didn't manage to complete my slightly over-ambitious project, but I learned a lot along the way.

EU Terminology & Open Source Translation Memory

2007-03-22T10:43:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Jost Zetzsche's The Toolkit bi-weekly translation-related newsletter, I found out that The EU have made their combined terminology database available publicly online. This will definitely be a great tool for anybody working with the EU's 24 languages. Too bad this tool can't be used in mashups or integrated with localisation tools though (without prior permission). From the copyright page:

You agree:

Not to create an archive of the IATE Web Site and/or Database,
Not to electronically save portions or all, or download part or all of the IATE Web Site and/or Database for local or external storage,
Not to use offline browser download in connection to the IATE Web Site and/or Database,
Not to use automatic access to the IATE Web Site and/or Database, unless explicit permission has been obtained,
Not to monitor the IATE Web Site and/or Database,
Not to display or distribute any part of the IATE Web Site and/or Database on any electronic network, including without limitation the Internet and the World Wide Web,
Not to systematically make printed or electronic copies of multiple extracts of the IATE Web Site and/or Database for any purpose,
Not to remove or alter the copyright notices or other means of identification or disclaimers as they appear in the IATE Web Site and/or Database,

You are permitted to:

Search, view, retrieve and display portions of the IATE Web Site and/or Database,
Print out single copies of portions of the IATE Web Site and/or database.

Also, the newsletter mentioned Open-Trans.eu, a searchable TM of freely available localisation resources from open source projects. The site - which currently supports 84(!) languages - is using the Translate Toolkit internally, and allows for anonymous XML-RPC search requests.