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This user helps translating FreeCol.
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This user helps translating Blockly.
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This user helps translating MathJax.
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This user helped translating Shapado.
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This user helped translating wikia.
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This user helped translating mwlib.rl by PediaPress.
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Hi there! My name's Yannis (Γιάννης). I was raised in Greece and England (half and half, in that order). I'm more comfortable speaking English than Greek, but I consider myself native in both languages. I also speak a little bit of Spanish, which I plan to learn more of. I had to take German in school (many years ago now), but I've forgotten just about all of it.
Chances are you have experience of some of my translations if you're a Greek speaker and a keen user of open source software. I almost exclusively work on software I use or have used myself, with few exceptions.
Along with the projects listed in the infobox on the right, I played an important role in localising the following open source projects (please note that I don't work on/maintain most of these anymore):
I deem the following to be my finest work:
- Lichess - by far and away my most involved work as it included countless UX/UI recommendations to upstream developers and led me to pick up a number of resources on effective HCI. I've never considered myself a chess player but the technology here is fantastic, as is the developer community that has formed around it. It's possibly the most played open source game ever at this point, and it has earned it - along with every other accolade it has received.
- OpenTTD - multiple passes resulted in a very coherent and high-quality translation with a vocabulary I created myself. The custom translation software they use really helped here. 3000+ strings. I eventually quit due to becoming disillusioned with how the developers were unwilling to progress the mechanics of the original game. The one that stood out to me in particular was the score mechanic, which the developers openly admit they don't look at or use, but also have no plans to change, instead recommending that you use a NewGRF (a mod). Even still, I highly recommend the game to anyone and everyone.
- Blockly - an intuitive way to get your head around programming. Fun for all ages. And yes, I know I'm cheating as it's in the infobox too, I really am that proud of it. :)
Services:
- MapOSMatic - I'd put it under defunct, but it's been revived as MyOSMatic by a keen developer. Lets you print off bespoke maps using OSM data, tailored very specifically to guiding yourself around with them.
- Habitica - called HabitRPG at the time, this is an app that gamifies your to-do list. I used it for a year or so but I found the premise less and less effective as time went on. Your mileage may vary, but it's absolutely worth a try, and I love what they've done with the interface. It's not just about the gimmick, it's a very polished app to keep track of your tasks with extensive reporting functions, configurable task repeats, reminders and much more.
- OpenRailwayMap - does exactly what it says on the tin, it's a map rendering using open data. The map legend is the main focus of l10n here.
- Wheelmap - I'm very fortunate to say I have never been in a wheelchair. I constantly saw updates in OSM history from this site and thought I'd check it out. I was very impressed with the project and thought I'd lend a helping hand as they're doing important work. At the time I worked on it, I must confess I was unimpressed with their l10n efforts; much of the service was still in the original German, even though it encouraged translators to work from (somewhat poor) English. I'm glad to say these points have been addressed, and that the project still offers an easy-to-use interface for both viewing and updating the map.
- Discourse - forum software. You can self-host, though it's heavy. I have long been a follower of Jeff Attwood and I'm a huge fan of the UI work on Discourse. It really did bring forum software to the modern age and I endorse the project.
- DuckDuckGo - yep, the proprietary search engine, when it was in its infancy. There was a community site at duck.co to co-ordinate localisation and programming efforts. As of 2019, it still fares poorly against Google for searching in languages other than English, but it's improving
- Disqus - the ubiquitous comment section of the internet. Most of the client-side stuff was already translated by the time I joined, but I did work a bit on the backend. I wasn't keen on contributing to proprietary software, so I left as soon as I was satisfied with my learnings from the experience.
- Transifex - if you're reading this, you're probably familiar with this service. It's a localisation platform that became a bit bloated, stagnated and drove projects away until they rewrote much of it. It's still bloated and the translation interface will destroy your machine, but it opened the door for a lot of l10n/i18n volunteers in open source and that's still valuable. The platform itself now fully proprietary.
Middleware:
- django-countries - a list of every country in the world. This involved a lot more research than I initially thought. I would go on to localise the name of every country in the world on OpenStreetMap from the research I carried out for this project.
- CKEditor - WYSIWYG HTML widget. Basically what you write blogs or comments with; looks like a word processor to the end-user.
- TinyMCE - the same as above, but more efficient on resources. Then again, apparently CKEditor 5 addressed the problem of how massive CKEditor was so I'm not sure which is better now if you need to embed this in your site/CMS.
- The iD Editor. It's the default (web) editor for OpenStreetMap. Very polished and easy to use. Its introduction was very beneficial to the project; I'm glad they've stuck with a limited scope so not to overwhelm new mappers.
- MojoSetup - create GUI installer packages for Linux (they work similar to Windows installers).
Other programs & apps:
- qBittorrent - my torrent client of choice. I became a user shortly after μTorrent 3 came out, and haven't stopped being a fan since.
- Audacious Music Player - the best Winamp 2.x clone when I still preferred that kind of music player.
- SMPlayer - a media player similar to VLC Media Player. I now opt for simpler programs as a rule and use mpv by itself (sometimes through a command line), but this is a very thorough user interface to MPlayer/mpv which includes many features you expect from a media player focused on video like bookmarks, a library, web streaming and much more. It could be buggy and render things oddly, at least at the time, and I found I ultimately preferred a simpler solution.
- Teeworlds - really fun side scrolling combat game. Often described as real-time Worms, but that's more what Liero (and its many clones) does. Teeworlds is leaner, meaner, absolutely hectic and always engaging.
- DeaDBeeF Player - a highly configurable music player I used for a time. Often compared to foobar 2000.
- OSMTracker for Android - a wonderful app that knows its purpose. It does one thing, and does it very well. It allows you to track GPS trails for mapping an area on OpenStreetMap. For example, you can mark a zebra crossing or leave a note as you're standing right on top of it.
- HexChat - this is the best IRC client for the vast majority of people and I used it for a long time before discovering the excellent WeeChat (be warned, this is very much a power user's IRC client). IRC is pretty much finished now but if you want to be a regular on the few communities that still use the protocol to communicate, you should have a good client and you can't go wrong with this one.
- Quassel IRC - another IRC client that I worked on. I find it more difficult to use and harder to recommend than HexChat, but I respect it still.
- Minitube - YouTube for the desktop. Eventually stopped using it in favour of the website + some add-ons.
- FocusWriter - distraction-free word processor. And when I say distraction free, I literally mean it's fullscreen with no HUD until you move the mouse. Helped me through a lot through a couple of projects.
- NovProg - a small, simple utility by Graeme Gott who also made FocusWriter. NovProg helps you track how much you've written over a span of time. It's intended for writing competitions like NanoWriMo, but I used it to motivate myself to complete some projects when I was in university.
- CuteMarkEd - a simple Qt-based markdown editor.
- FDesktopRecorder - a screen recording program for KDE. It unfortunately disappeared not long after it was created.
- Vespucci - full-featured OpenStreetMap editor for Android. I ultimately came to the conclusion it's too difficult to work on something as complex as a map of the world through a touchscreen UI, but I highly respect the dedication of everyone to this project. For my part, I now map from PC, mostly using either the iD Editor or JOSM (for more difficult/substantial changes).
- Elementary OS applications including (but not limited to) Wingpanel, Switchboard and Scratch - the last is a very simple GTK+ text editor for desktop use, similar to Notepad. These are from several years ago and most of the Elementary applications I contributed to have now been replaced.
- Trac - the wiki and issue tracker. I understand it's very comprehensive, but I didn't support it for very long as I found it difficult to use.
- ownCloud - a number of utilities for it like the document editor. I'm not sure how it is today, but I found several bugs at the time I used it. I'm aware it has been forked into Nextcloud if you're interested in hosting a personal file storage service.
- OpenSlides - more to test my own capabilities than anything, it was a lot of work but I couldn't quite get it to 100%. Some years later, all but a few languages were removed, likely since they were unmaintained.
- Midori Web Browser - a lightweight GTK+ WebKit-based web browser (from when these were really needed). Activity tapered off at some point, but seems to have now been reborn.
- Universal Bypass - a browser extension that gets you past annoying link shorteners (like adfly) which make you wait.
- Whisker Menu - the best start menu for the Xfce desktop. I prefer KDE these days but Xfce certainly used to be much more lightweight, and I still think it's an excellent option for anyone looking for a solid Linux desktop (Xfce is noticeably less buggy than alternatives).
Games:
- Xonotic - arena shooter in the vein of Quake 3.
- Simsu - Sudoku on your computer. Can't think of a better program for Sudoku, either. As great as it is, what I really want are Picross puzzles on my computer and phone, the open source way.
- Widelands - a game similar to Settlers. I didn't finish the translation as I admittedly lost interest in the game.
- Neverball - roll the ball into the hole to win. Simple but so much fun. Later found it's a clone of 'Super Monkey Ball', but this is so polished you might as well think it's the original. Only translated strings that didn't involve creative writing.
- HexGlass - a Tetris-like game that uses hexagons instead of tetrominos.
- Enigma - a puzzle game unlike any other. I normally stay away from puzzle games, but you control the character (the marble) in this one and it feels quite 'hands-on' and has a small action element, which I really appreciate. Again, creative writing is definitely not my strong suit so I stuck to localising the menus and other functions of the game.
- Frogatto & Friends - one of the most polished open source games ever, a platformer in this case. The art is proprietary, but everything about the game is wonderful. It's one of my earliest i18n contributions.
There are many projects I contributed to that are now defunct. This isn't always a bad thing. Some projects like WikiReader served their purpose in the context of their time. Some of them are visible in the infobox to the right, some listed above, and there are many more. Among the now-defunct projects I've contributed to are DjangoBB, the Tor Project's Vidalia and Torbutton, TextSecure and RedPhone (which merged into Signal, though TS was forked into Silence to maintain SMS support), several MeeGo applications (Calculator, Dialer, etc), Plupload, ComicsReader (Android app; I recommend Tachiyomi for both off- and on-line comic, manga and webtoon reading), and probably more that I'm forgetting.
Please don't hesitate to hit the email button in the bar on your left if you want to get in touch.
