XOOPS: Interview of Ricardo Costa (Trabis) by Russian users of XOOPS

Posted by: omeechOn 2010/1/19 22:50:00 7077 reads
Recently the XOOPS Russian Support site interviewed Trabis (Ricardo Costa). Here is the English translation:

Dear Ricardo!

Russia's XOOPS users congratulate you on joining the XOOPS Council. In this regard, let me ask you a few questions about how you see the development of XOOPS in Russia's.

1. Starting with version 2.4 of XOOPS we have a license key - will it affect the accessibility and free availability of XOOPS in future?

Re: No. License is just a number (hash) that uniquely identifies your XOOPS instalation. It is a feature for module developers, it does not affect the accessibility and free availability of XOOPS.

2. Because of peculiarities of the Russian language, many users are accustomed to the encoding win-1251 (cp-1251) and many avoid UTF-8. How do you see the UTF-8 within XOOPS - is it here to stay?

Re: I'm also used to use latin1 but in the future XOOPS will only support utf-8. I recommend you to translate and encorage your users to use UTF-8.

3. It's no secret that Russian support for XOOPS leaves much to be desired. Currently, work is underway on the project resuscitation of http://www.XOOPS2.ru, creating new projects: XOOPS-ORG.ru, MYXOOPS.ru etc. What do you think, we need to create strong community of XOOPS in Russia, as well as to attract more users, developers and designers?

Re: I think that you should have only ONE support site for Russian users. I don't know how you can engage users to USE XOOPS. As Mamba says: "don't ask what Xoops can do for you, ask what you can do for Xoops". The important is keeping support alive and provide translations for modules, core and XOOPS.org news.

4. On Google Code you created a SVN-repository XUUPS - what is it connected? Is SourceForge not enough?

Re: Xuups is a private project and it is not related with XOOPS directly. I use google code because it is easier to create new packages.

5. How much do you recommend the creation of a public SVN for the development of joint projects?

Re: I think module developers should learn to work as team and that having a common repository would be great for XOOPS. We will create a SVN for maintaining official modules, we need to work toghether in modules such as CBB, article, tags, profile, mylinks, mydownloads, etc.

6. Many people like the blocks manager in version 2.5 PreAlpha. What other innovations can we expect?

Re: I'm not lead developer for 2.5.x series but I believe 2.5 will not have more innovations beside the System module. The 2.5 main focus is to move code to PHP5. Features will come in 2.6 and/or 3.0.

7. Modules of the French developers of TDM have nice graphical Administrative User Interface in the style of Joomla - will it become standard for all modules of XOOPS?

Re: It would be nice to provide module developers a greater Framework. We need classes for creating breadcrumbs, admin menu, about pages, etc, etc. But this is not on 2.5 roadmap.

8. When do you expect to release Publisher?

Re: I believe we will release an alpha this month.

9. What wishes and advises would you have for the XOOPS Russian community?

Re: I just wish you good luck, I'm also trying to set up a Portuguese support site and I'm not the best person to advise how to do it!

Ricardo, thanks for your time. Your opinion is very valuable to us.

Re: No problem, thanks for asking!