OpenTeacher
Milan Boers runs the OpenTeacher project. I asked him about the project and his use of Launchpad.
Matthew: Tell us about OpenTeacher and what you’re hoping to achieve.
Milan: OpenTeacher is an application that helps you learning a foreign language. You enter some words, and OpenTeacher tests if you know them. There’s project called Teach2000, but this is only available for Windows and it’s closed-source. I hope to make OpenTeacher a good (or maybe even better) alternative to Teach2000 for other platforms like Linux. OpenTeacher is written in Python and
Qt4, so it can run on many platforms.
Matthew: How many people contribute to Openteacher?
Milan: Just me, but I would like to have more people contributing by adding blueprints, bug reports and patches. I’m not a python-expert, so coders are very welcome. OpenTeacher is still a very young project, so maybe it will grow later on.
Matthew: What made you choose Launchpad?
Milan: I’ve been using Ubuntu for a while now and sometimes reported bugs to other Launchpad-project, so I already knew what Launchpad was. For me it’s the ultimate place to manage a project with features like bug reporting, blueprints and code hosting. Especially the easy and clean interface is an advantage. SourceForge can learn a lot from the Launchpad interface.
Matthew: What features do you feel are missing from Launchpad?
Milan: I think the translation feature of Launchpad is a weak spot. At the moment, it’s not really easy to find the untranslated sentences. It’s possible to only view the untranslated items, but this also shows the items which already have suggestions for translations but have yet to be reviewed. I think it would be better to make it possible to show untranslated items which also don’t have any suggestions.
I also miss the feature to upload .ts files instead of .po files to be translated. Qt uses its own translation system, using .ts files.
Matthew: Is there anything in Launchpad that is much harder than it should be?
Milan: I haven’t discovered any. Every feature that I’ve seen is easy to use for developers.
Matthew: Do you interact with other projects through Launchpad?
Milan: Not at all.
Matthew: What’s next for OpenTeacher?
The next important thing is the release of the first stable version. I’ve got a big list of improvements that should be made, and I’m working hard to realize them 🙂
Matthew: Thanks Milan!
December 17th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I think this is very cool. I was looking for such a project. I might help out if I have any time to spare after hacking on my own project.
I just tried the latest revision of the code on my computer, here are my comments. I know you asked for blueprints, but I personnaly hate using launchpad blueprints as a place to collect ideas, blueprints should be detailed, IMO.
* The table should have the emphasis in “enter list”, not the text field. Swap their places perhaps.
* When you make a mistake in “teach me”, the correct answer should be displayed underneath the text field, not inside it.
Keep it up!
May 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Well Milan,
I think it’s a great project. I’m a beginner in Python, but if I grow stronger, I’d be happy to help you. It would be great if this project was in the Ubuntu package system. I do not know how active you are, but this program has already given me plenty marks higher in French and Latin. Keep it up!
I’ll try to help, and I’ll try to don’t bother you.
P.S. Have you got TODO’s?
Daan Sprenkels