Bityi (translating code editor)

Almost all programming is done in programming "languages" based on English. These are really codes, much less than languages, with a limited vocabulary. Still, it's a significant barrier for other-language programmers, especially young ones. A modern computer, even a cheap one, would have no trouble doing transparent, real-time translation into the user's natural language. For instance, on disk you'd have python "if ... else...", but on screen, you'd see (and write) "si... sino..." (spanish).

To make my proposal a little more specific:

• Based on scintilla (BOB open-source editing component, already does coloring and folding).
• If the user unknowingly used an English keyord on-screen, it would be "escaped" with a prefix like "ES_" on disk.
• Similarly, if a program used a whateverlanguage keyword, it could be escaped on-screen.
• A right-click on any word shows the English version, obviously includes easy option to turn translation off globally.
• By default, only translates keywords for given programming language, but includes option to have cascading translation files for files and the libraries they use. These could be created on-the-fly using right-clicks with dictionary support.

a few implementation brainstorms...

• Only what's actually on screen need be duplicated in memory
• The cursor counts as a wordbreak for speed reasons.

Interested? Contact me.... I will be continuing to explore this idea, but I'm not going to jump in with both feet unless I have some backup.--Homunq 16:20, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

Some details of scite/scintilla: GTK based, as is takes under 2 megs decompressed and with lexers for many many languages.

But...

I just read the OLPC interface guidelines, particularly the "view source" key. From one angle: that just emphasizes that this idea should be absolutely central to this project, I'm actually even more surprised than I already was that (as far as I can tell, sorry if I've missed you) no-one has thought of it. From another angle: if you want to be able to view the source OF the view source activity, a laudible goal, that would tend to indicate that for OLPC purposes this would be better based on IDLE. But my interest in this idea is not solely OLPC-based. So... again, contact me if you want to collaborate with me on this one. If my first collaborator wants to go with or other Python/TK based editor, great, I like to program Python; if they prefer scintilla in C++, great, I think it will have a wider impact.

Either way, I repeat: this idea is absolutely vital to OLPC fulfilling its goal (perhaps not the main goal, but clearly a goal) of creating as many programmers as possible.Homunq 06:05, 28 July 2007 (EDT)