eQ renews French support pledge | Drobe.co.uk archives

eQ renews French support pledge

By Chris Williams. Published: 7th Dec 2003, 12:02:08 | Permalink | Printable

VirtualRiscPC employed

eQ France are continuing with their plan to inflict RISC OS upon the French computing world.

eQ's David Feugey emailed us to say they've gathered a 'SmartDesktop' team of RISC OS users and ex-journalists to perform English to French translation services for developers, dealers and users.

"So this is quite professional, and not very pricey", David remarked. The SmartDesktop scheme is subscription based, see the new eQ France site for pricing details.

eQ are also finding other ways to get RISC OS into France. Another new product revolves around VirtualRiscPC-SE running on Linux using Wine, in a standard PC. We're told eQ plan to ship a silent PC that uses a fan-less PSU and flash based storage.

Last month saw the release of German RISC OS 5 resources. With a4 and eQ's work, it's good to see support still exists for European users.

Links

eQ France website

Previous: Again with the laptops
Next: GemPrint project progressing

Discussion

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This sounds very promising. Fingers crossed it goes well

Timothy609 on 7/12/03 3:50PM
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I think you should know best that the support for most European users has always been very good, namely the British user base. ;-)

JGZimmerle on 7/12/03 6:06PM
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Is understanding of the English language really the most significant obstacle for RISC OS developers, dealers and users in France?

Most French people I know (and at least some French-speaking RISC OS users I know) have a good knowledge of English, particularly relating to RISC OS.

The Linux/Wine/VRPC combination is certainly interesting. I do wonder if Castle are already using flash based storage (i.e. no hard disks) in some of their Iyonix-based products for customers in specific industries.

Would it be better to use "ordinary" rather than "standard", when referring to "a PC" ? My rule of thumb is that a standard is something that is specified, and publicly available.

dgs

dgs on 7/12/03 6:57PM
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I don't think there's any doubting that many people in mainland Europe have, if not excellent, then servicable English skills.

The salient point, I believe, and I think David mentioned elsewhere previously, is that products sold in France have to conform to a certain level of French documentation.

The same is true in Canada and I'm sure you can think of lesser examples such as Wales, Ireland and New Zealand where certain situations call for bilinguism.

mrchocky on 7/12/03 7:35PM
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In reply to dgs:

Have a look at the VA website for info on getting VA5K to work under Wine. Not sure if they've changed it from saying it is VARPC to VA5K.

As for VARPC, better off using WineX rather than Wine. Crossover Office works to an extent

Nodoid on 7/12/03 8:52PM
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mrchocky: I probably missed David's earlier post. There are many examples where multi-lingual presentation is beneficial, and some where it's legally mandatory, but I'm still sceptical about the volume of work connected with legally mandatory RISC OS software documentation in a particular language. Time will tell!

(But I suppose France is the place where it would tell first).

Nodoid: There is a Lintel box sitting on the floor near where I type this, but it's been switched off for six months or so. (There's an Iyonix quite close to it, you see). I don't really see why I'd use Wine or WineX or VARPC or Windows at all, I just said it was interesting.

I do know a couple of RISC OS users who have used VARPC.

dgs

dgs on 7/12/03 9:53PM
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This ties in nicely with the Solo computer being made for African markets. A good many countries across the African continent speak French.

sascott on 8/12/03 2:03AM
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Pretty sure VARPC doesn't work under Wine - I never got RS to work, although I think VA5000 did, albeit slow as Hell, they all work fine under VMWare though, not sure about Bochs or VirtualPC.

Personally I don't see what the problem is with using it on Windows - it's going to be a lot less hassle than with Wine, plus most of us have to use Windows for something or other.

simo on 8/12/03 3:16AM
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sascott: I thought Solo didn't run RISC OS these days anyway?

dgs

dgs on 8/12/03 9:10AM
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In reply to simo:

VARPC will work under WineX, it just isn't easy. Never had a problem getting RS or VA5K to work under Wine though. Infact, it was simpler than getting it to run under a true copy of W2K!

Nodoid on 8/12/03 9:52AM
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VA5k and VARPC *do* work under wine, but it can be a faff. A vanilla wine install won't include the necessary dlls, so you'd have to get these from somewhere. CrossoverOffice doesn't work ATM (their wine branch is due for an update). I don't know about WineX, but that's not such a nice solution anyway (they don't feed back to the main Wine tree). Personally, I've installed VA5k under a vanilla wine build, with dlls copied across from CrossoverOffice. It works pretty well and isn't too slow provided I don't use too large a screen mode (1024x768 works OK). There are some problems with the latest upgrades, though (it fubared mouse support here).

To drag this back on topic, if eQ can produce a standard system with VRPC running on linux, that would be a Good Thing IMO (arguments about emulation to one side - just compare running on linux to running on XP). However, I couldn't see any comments about this on their site - but building a linux + RISC OS system using only Flash storage could be expensive for the amount of space needed!

johnpettigrew on 8/12/03 9:54AM
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jp: expensive using only flash? Are you sure? Please justify this. I've just done some work to address precisely the issue of flash usage by Linux, so I would be interested in your own findings/references.

mrchocky on 8/12/03 10:04AM
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Referring to an earlier post(s) by dgs about translation, if you want to attract more people to the platform, putting it in their language is a _big_ help. Regardless of the strength of most Europeans' English, it would seem mildly insulting to me that we would expect them to use and support an OS if we weren't even trying to put it into their native language...

hutchies on 8/12/03 12:53PM
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...of course I'm English so maybe I wouldn't understand. I certainly wouldn't like to have to use a computer continuously and entirely in French (even though I probably could).

hutchies on 8/12/03 12:58PM
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Staff at my school are writing reports using Microsoft Word and most of us now sound American, by default. Color, realize, gray... etc. It looks most odd to talk about "mathematical rigor".

martin on 8/12/03 2:13PM
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mrchocky: Just a guess that flash is much more expensive than a hard disc on a per-GB basis. Unless there are some media that are a lot cheaper than CF/MMC/SD/whatever.

johnpettigrew on 8/12/03 2:31PM
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Reply to dgs: See [link] OK it's RiscOS or Linux... Mart.

Mart on 8/12/03 8:57PM
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Mart: That page is a year and a half old. A lot has changed since then.

dgs

dgs on 9/12/03 8:50AM
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martin:

Some fool installed and set up Word to be in US English instead of UK? I hope that if your staff can't change the default language they at least trust their own spelling over what Word offers.

Back on topic: It's perhaps important to consider that having the OS in the selected language is only part of the battle. What about the apps?

-- Spriteman

Spriteman on 9/12/03 10:38AM
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But if Explan haven't bothered to change their site in 1 1/2 years that's all the evidence anyone need that they MUST still be a RISC OS company?

Seriously, I think the new Solo is LINUX only as it's ARM 9. It would need RISC OS 5 and a a new set of drivers. It's a shame. The Solo would shift in the West too if marketed in the Green press. Those clockwork radios were quite popular here, though originally designed for Africa. I'm sure many Solo users would appreciate the choice of an OS as easy as RISC OS.

JessFranco on 9/12/03 7:26PM
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>The salient point, is that products sold in France have to conform to a certain level of French documentation.

Exactly...

Moreover, not a lot of people understand english (or spanish, russian, whatever) in France. I don't think more than 35% of french people know another langage. BTW, I'm not sure that english people would like to get a german computer with a german only documentation

For VirtualRPC, my point was that we cannot accept to sell windows, just to use VARPC. So we try to make it work - plainly - under Wine.

Finally, for the IYONIX case, we try to conclude an agreement with Castle. We already have very silent power supplies (no fan at all), and 256 MB to 6 GB Flash CF with a fast IDE converter. Don't you think it would be fun to put all of this together ?

We still work on software... also... so stay tuned.

eqfrance on 16/12/03 12:05PM
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