Hi,

i have noticed, that there are some things in the maemo community that might need some help. And while i often get questions like "can you please add this or that feature to your program, i can't help you since i am not a programmer", there are plenty of things where the community _can_ help the developers. But there are no places where this kind of help can be offered/requested.

Things, the average user may be able to help with are e.g.:

• Spell checking the english language of software made by non-native english speakers
• Translations for other languages
• Nice icons
• Help files/translation of help files
• Packaging, uploading to extras
• Maintaining the downloads page at maemo.org
• ...

Just to mention my own gpxview as an example: I am sure some of the english dialogs sound strange as i am a native german speaker. That's also the reason why there are only english and german localizations of gpxview. The help files exist, but are missing some content, especially with respect to the latest extensions. The "changes" on maemo downloads aren't updated automatically, so the changes currently listed there for the current version in fact belong to a very old version. And with this project still growing there's sure a need for some detailed "how to" web page explaining all the basics as well as the advanced topics to the avererage user.

I am sure other software faces similar issues. None of this is critical and most users sure can live with these things. But imho this is really a thing where people can get involved.

What's missing is a place for developers to list their needs and a place for volunteers to offer their services.

MoG

I think garage may have some facilities oriented in that direction; at least it can track capabilities of users. I don't know what, if any, provisions it has for projects advertising needs, though.

https://garage.maemo.org/people/ could be an infrastructure for this, but it seems nobody uses it. maybe if it had better, more down-to-earth categories ("translation", "artwork",...) instead of the somewhat esoteric "Project Manager"-like ones it would attract people?

I myself find it difficult to help.

I do have time to do translations, for example (english to german), mainly because I hate using english language software. But how do I find projects that want a translator? Projects that would even explain to me how to do the translations in this very application? (I used to edit .po files once, but that's about it. I might need some technical guidance.)

...this is exactly the reason I was brought on-board on the OMWeather project.

-- and, perhaps an automated system to find folks for these sorts of things is needed. I responded to a request for help that was posted on this forum.

"Project Manager" is completely useless. What should i as a spare-time-developer do with someone who wants to be my project manager? Heck, i have to cope with all those managers at work, i don't need one for my spare time projects :-)

But that's it!! That's all you need to do. You then copy the translated file to some place on your device and the translations show up.

But even if there's more, a developer will copy with that. If someone spends some hours translating, the developer will sure spend the few minutes to get the new translation included into the package. Doing translation and help files really is as trivial as writing a text file or two.