Comments on: Scaling Ubiquity to 60+ Languages: We Need Your Help

By: Lavern Innocent

Lavern Innocent — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:19:02 +0000

I have found only two posts in your blog. this is really disappointing matter. i hope you will more active about your blog.

By: şahinnparadisegelenekselramazancoşkusu

şahinnparadisegelenekselramazancoşkusu — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 03:21:21 +0000

which has ever been carried out which approaches this magnitude.

By: pellet mill manufacturer

pellet mill manufacturer — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:30:36 +0000

that I have an account on twitter, that sending a file to twitter requires turning it into an URL, that images can get uploaded to an image site like flickr or numerous others, and that I have an account on flickr.

By: basur

basur — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:54:26 +0000

However, as you described, nobody would want to write that way for Ubiquity. The “verbing” convention in English doesn’t follow English grammar rules any more than a similar convention would in Portuguese.

By: Sex

Sex — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:06:53 +0000

Letting the browser understand our native tongues is a bold and daunting task, but also tremendously exciting and rewarding one.

By: porno

porno — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:53:27 +0000

Letting the browser understand our native tongues is a bold and daunting task, but also tremendously exciting and rewarding one. ^^

By: Zayıflama Lida Fx15 Ve Biber Hapı Zlfvbh

Zayıflama Lida Fx15 Ve Biber Hapı Zlfvbh — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:49:41 +0000

Thanks for the introduction Aza.

Letting the browser understand our native tongues is a bold and daunting task, but also tremendously exciting and rewarding one. ^^

I look forward to working with all of you on this bold initiative!

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:50:28 +0000

The largest challenge I see for bringing such an interface to my native language German (which is probably among the more simple languages for that) is that the command form of a sentence having different order than the normal sentence, but I expect that users naturally will try to use either of them when typing in ubiquity.
While in English “search Google for ‘foo’” is both the command and a normal sentence (infinitive construction actually), in German “Suche ‘foo’ mit Google” is the command form and “‘foo’ mit Google suchen” is the infinitive construction that probably as much people would enter naturally, not to speak of different prepositions they may chose instead of “mit” or a passive construct that may be as natural (“Google nach ‘foo’ durchsuchen”).
The major challenge for German is that there are very often many ways to say the same thing and people will (try to) use either of those ways.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:02:47 +0000

UBIQUITY IS FREAKING AWESOME! Just felt I needed to tell someone that.

By: Edgar Gonçalves

Edgar Gonçalves — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:17:18 +0000

Hmm, let me comment on some discussed items:
1. “I don’t really see why Portuguese makes verbing any less natural than English does.”
– My point here is that most web applications have names that can resemble english verbs. “Flickr screenshot” can be seen as “flickr a screenshot”, and understood as “send the screenshot to flickr”. The same with “Twitter #world”, it can be mentally processed in english as “Twitter (the current text selection) to the hashtag #world”. (Sorry for making the same webapps as examples, but this way we avoid extra confusion). In Portuguese, the phonetic similarity of those names with grammatically viable verbs isn’t that easy to make. For instance, all verbs (in their infinitive form) end up with “ar”, “er” or “ir”. Other terminations just seem odd, foreign-like, and don’t integrate well with the language without starting to sound too technical. But other than that I know the sentence structure isn’t correct in English, either. However, somehow it “sounds” right, and that’s what my mind is looking for. (Note that my examples are only between English vs. Portuguese. I’m sure there may be far more difficult comparisons to make with other languages.)

2. “It *becomes* natural when you stop the inner grammarian in you from trying to “correct” it.”
– I strongly agree. This is what I mean with the teen shortened language. If it is practical, we become used to it, it becomes natural. I’m ok with it, I even expect it!

3. “I’d rather tell Ubiquity what I want rather than how to get it”
– That’s also ok for me. in fact, I already use Ubiquity that way with the “map” command, for instance. But for this to happen I think we have to cut on some command freedom. I have a command called buxfer-add that makes a transaction on Buxfer. It’s syntax is “BUXFER-ADD amount IN description”. I realize now this is a bad syntax, and it’s on my to-do to change it. A better way to achieve this is to make a command for the webapp “buxfer”, registered to the action “spend” (e.g.), with a numeric direct (i.e., unnamed) complement and a “described as” complement. This way Ubiquity could offer me the Buxfer option (or make it default, or some other choices I can’t envision now), when I start typing “spend”. This could work well in portuguese, too: “gasta 65€ em hotel”. The translation work is, as a side-effect of removing syntax freedom, made easy for everyone. We only have to translate the “doing” action words, and the complement introduction prepositions (e.g. “to”, “in”, “as”, …). Do you have other plans, does this idea fail and fall down miserably on something I’m missing now?

4. “I’ll gladly sacrifice as much of the “natural” part of language as I can get away with not typing, as long as Ubiquity can figure out what I mean.”
– Ahh, that for me is vital in Ubiquity. take away its autocomplete, and ubiquity looses a fan. But I’m not sacrificing anything. One of the most interesting thing about the (current version of) Ubiquity for me is that it builds a description of the command we’re going to perform, so that we can read it, and know we’re not making a mistake. And this description comes up in natural language. So if I type “shot #badw” I can always read the sentence “send the current secreenshot link to the hashtag #badwebdesign via Twitter”. Long live preview messages for the bridge between shortcut madness and intelligible thinking flow!

That said, thank you for commenting my comment. One side-question. Are you Mitcho, Aza, an Ubiquity user/fan/developer? I’m talking simply as a user/fan, just giving my 2 cents, and hoping to help moving forwards. And just to make it clear (my first comment may lacked that), I believe translating Ubiquity and get it closer to more and more people is not only noble, an interesting problem, but also a public service: everyone should be able to be more productive!