Kevin Foreman wrote:

> First, as Andrew indicates, we should have Italian covered from a 
> development point of view, but we could always use more eyeballs and 
> users on the resultant product.  Stay tuned for more detailed schedule 
> information and when you can get your hands on the first download.  I 
> would love to hear your feedback.

I'll be glad to review whatever you'll submit. I was one of the first to 
test out HelixPlayer m1 and commenting out on lwn.net (nick: prometeo), 
because I felt as a major hole missing a rp player under modern linux 
systems. If the player is also somewhat open, that's a plus. And, 
frankly, an easy yet powerful player is surely missing in the linux 
camp. I'm not a linux zealot, as I use Win too, and having a lean player 
(without so much bloat as the commercial counterpart) there, is also a 
good thing (TM :) ). I've also raised the attention of the player's 
developers about the multiplatform NTLM authentication used in Mozilla 
(don't know about the outcome, but at least they agreed on checking the 
legal issues of it), instead of using the Win only solution they put in 
m2 IIRC.

> Second, since this is a new project and you are one of the first to 
> step forward, I'd like to ask if you can share your motivation for 
> wanting to help.  Of course we've read all the studies as to why 
> people contribute, but it would be nice to get real life input form 
> someone who appears so keen to help.

Looks like some kind of survey, isn' it? :) Anyway, I think that for a 
software to succeed, it needs acceptance: you can get it two ways, 
technically and/or by the ease of use. Technically, I think the success 
of RP speaks for itself. As ease of use is concerned, a major plus on 
the road to acceptance is localization, especially in countries where 
the english language is not so common (yes, there are places where this 
is the rule and yes, it's a major drawback). I think that Helix is good 
project (at least in concept: the success of it doesn't depend on just 
me! :) ) and as such it deserves my help: how can I do that? 
Technically, I'm a C coder (not a very good one: remus.sf.net is 
something I'm working on and I'm not particulary proud of), so I haven't 
got a chance to help in that department, but I'm good (at least I think) 
at translating software. I have started such activity in the old Amiga 
days to pay me shareware license fees (at the time paying $15 to someone 
in the US or Germany would have costed me 30-40$ at least), and because 
I hated some stupid translations I came across. See, English is a 
language with a restricted dictionary, but the same word can be 
translated in many different correct ways in Italian. As an example, 
button (as in "Press the OK button"), can show up in Italian as 
"bottone": literally, it's correct, but the most common definition of 
"bottone" is "button for a dress": would you like something like that in 
your own language? How is a user supposed to understand correctly 
without smiling?
Think about the old BIOSes' message: "No keyboard found. Press F1 to 
continue.", you can easily check it by yourself on old motherboards... 
Please, try not to ROFL. :)
As a reward, I get many (well, not *so* many, but enough) thankful 
emails by users, for example by mozilla users: the italian translation 
of the suite helped in the acceptance of it in a few organizations and 
that's my way to thank the developers (spread the word, possibly 
translated!).
Another reward is seeing less and less bad examples as the "button" one 
above, something that I think contributes at the "professional" look of 
an application.
I hope I was clear enough and forgive my approximative english... ;)
If you need more specific answers on something, please don't hesitate to 
ask.
Cheers, Giacomo.