Possible Retirement of /en/OCR-and-Machine-Translation

[charlottejmc]

I'm opening an issue to discuss the possible retirement of /en/OCR-and-Machine-Translation. Currently, its many unsolved issues have halted its translation into Portuguese (documented in ph-submissions Issue #371).

• The lesson appears to be written only for users of the Mac operating system, so users of other systems would have to adapt the instructions
• The translation software used in the lesson (Yandex) has been deprecated, and this is corroborated by an open issue unresolved since 2020 on the Translate Shell repository
• The -despeckle script does not work as expected, and needs to be run many more times for the user to start seeing a slight difference
• A couple of other scripts remain unclear, and require additional instructions to be run effectively (see details in this comment)
• Overall, the lesson requires significant prior knowledge and applied experience, both to work through the steps as they are explained, and to adapt them to different operating systems and alternative software. Therefore, it is expected to become an advanced level lesson, rather than intermediate.

I have written to the author @akhlaghiandrew to ask whether they would have the capacity to update the lesson to address these issues, ideally within the next 2 months. If they do not, and/or if we are in agreement that to update this lesson would be too complex, and raise too many new challenges for readers, then @hawc may take the difficult decision to retire it altogether, in line with our Lesson Retirement Policy.

@hawc2, @anisa-hawes and I are on hand to help with any questions you may have, so please do get in touch!

[hawc2]

Hi @akhlaghiandrew, as Managing Editor of the Programming Historian in English, I'm writing to check in whether you will be able to respond to this request for updates? If we don't hear from you in the next month, we will be proceeding with retiring this lesson. In that case, your lesson will still be discoverable as a retired lesson (with a URL that follows this format: https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/retired/LESSON-TITLE) which can continue to be cited, but we won't continue to update the code and lesson to accommodate necessary changes.

[akhlaghiandrew]

Alex, Hey sorry for the late reply. Thanks for getting back to me. Totally willing to update this. Andrew

…

On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 10:55 AM Alex Wermer-Colan ***@***.***> wrote: Hi @akhlaghiandrew <https://github.com/akhlaghiandrew>, as Managing Editor of the Programming Historian in English, I'm writing to check in whether you will be able to respond to this request for updates? If we don't hear from you in the next month, we will be proceeding with reitiring this lesson. In that case, you're lesson will still be visible as a published lesson which can continue to be cited, but we won't continue to update the code and lesson to accommodate necessary changes. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3362 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFTEG2EA4FYPZ24PU5HHKXTZZ2T4NAVCNFSM6AAAAABOPA7TVKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDGOJTHA4TQNBRGE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[charlottejmc]

Dear @akhlaghiandrew,

Thank you very much for getting back to us about your lesson. We are delighted to hear that you are interested in updating it to solve the issues we have been experiencing.

You will certainly find it helpful to read through our contributors’ detailed feedback about the lesson’s problems in this issue. We’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to address every problem carefully, and to test the lesson as a whole, to check whether you might find anything else that we have not yet discovered or outlined.

I have opened a new branch on the Jekyll repository (I have named it Issue-3362 to refer back to this issue) in which you will be able to edit your lesson directly. You can also navigate to en > lessons > OCR-and-Machine-Translation, within the Issue-3362 branch.

We can collaborate on the file within the branch, and merge it in with our Managing Editor @hawc2's approval once everything is ready. Since the changes required are likely to be quite involved, we might also pass the updated lesson through a round of copyediting/typesetting before the merge.

@hawc2 will be able to advise you on updates to the content and direction of the new lesson, while @anisa-hawes and I are on hand to help with any queries you may have about our GitHub workflow. If you find you need to update the images, or introduce new associated assets, we are here to help with these changes too.

Ideally, it would be great if the lesson could be ready within the next month, i.e. by ~ November 19th. Does this sound like an appropriate timeframe to you?

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make the process easier for you.

Best wishes,

Charlotte

[anisa-hawes]

Hello Andrew @akhlaghiandrew,

I hope you're well. Do you still feel that you have capacity to help us update your lesson?

We'd be pleased to connect on a call if it would help to talk things through, and find the simplest workflow for you to contribute revisions.

With thanks,
Anisa

[akhlaghiandrew]

Anissa, Yes this weekend. Sorry for the delay. Andrew

…

On Thu, Nov 7, 2024 at 10:26 AM Anisa Hawes ***@***.***> wrote: Hello Andrew @akhlaghiandrew <https://github.com/akhlaghiandrew>, I hope you're well. Do you still feel that you have capacity to help us update your lesson? We'd be pleased to connect on a call if it would help to talk things through, and find the simplest workflow for you to contribute revisions. With thanks, Anisa — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3362 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFTEG2FXILKEEZTSTEA46MLZ7OBA3AVCNFSM6AAAAABOPA7TVKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDINRSGUZDCMRXGA> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[anisa-hawes]

Many thanks, @akhlaghiandrew.
Let us know if you encounter any difficulties or need support. ☺️

[charlottejmc]

Hello @akhlaghiandrew,

Thank you for confirming that you are preparing to update your lesson. I'd like to point back to my comment above and remind you that I have opened a new branch on the Jekyll repository (named Issue-3362 to refer back to this issue) in which you can edit your lesson directly. You can also navigate to en > lessons > OCR-and-Machine-Translation, within the Issue-3362 branch.

Please keep in touch with us as you go along! We would be very happy to collaborate.

[charlottejmc]

Dear @akhlaghiandrew,

Do you still feel that you have capacity to work on these updates? If so, I would be keen to collaborate on finalising them together over the next few weeks. If you don't feel you have capacity, we can follow through with our protocol and retire your lesson from our live directory.

As Alex @hawc2 explained above, if retired, your lesson would still be discoverable with its DOI, while its existing URL would be redirected to follow the format https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/retired/LESSON-TITLE, which could continue to be cited, but we wouldn't continue to update the code or lesson.

Please do get in touch with us as soon as possible if you're still interested in working on this together. If we do not hear from you, we will move forward with the retirement.

[charlottejmc]

Hello @akhlaghiandrew,

Do you have any news about the lesson updates?