[LibreQoS] billing integrations

Fri Oct 21 15:28:20 EDT 2022

Wow, internationalization is always a fun one. I've worked on precisely one
i8n
project, so my knowledge is pretty limited (and it was English-Welsh, which
isn't a big
target audience; I'd hope the principles are similar. I'm originally from
England, with
a Welsh mother - I've just been in the US for 20+ years and largely lost my
accent).
That particular project only translated documentation and webpages;
configuration and source code stayed strictly in English.

IIRC, we ended up with a set of "template" pages in each supported language,
with markup indicating "program puts X here". All of the programmatically
generated text was fed into a string table, and the template system
substituted the appropriate locale's (selected by the user) template
and then filled in the appropriate strings from the string table. It
worked, I do
remember that some of the translations were really tricky. Ordering changes
a lot. For example "Herbert is not a valid name" is "Nid yw Herbert yn enw
dilys"
in Welsh (I think; haven't spoken it for decades, but I checked with Google
Translate and it looks right).

Non-latin character-set languages become painful, really fast. Validation is
*really* hard when there are multiple different ways of producing "Können"
(it's valid to use the ö character, it's also valid to use an o with
modifiers).
I had some fun with that one in Rust Brain Teasers:
https://media.pragprog.com/titles/hwrustbrain/string.pdf

Rust has pretty good support for most of the common i8n systems, and
UTF-8 is its default character set. It looks like Python is in pretty
similar
shape. So there isn't a big barrier there, beyond deciding where i8n fits
into the project, how deep it needs to be, and finding translators!

As for the billing side.. I'm not sure that's LibreQoS's problem (yet).
Ideally,
we'd become popular enough that vendors want to support our integrations,
and have a rich-enough API to make supporting Libre not hurt. I know I'd
rather not try and go head to head with all of the various billing
vendors...
It looks like UISP has a pretty good language and currency list - but I've
NO idea how it works with payment processors overseas. I remember
PayPal giving me all manner of troubles when I did some (free) consulting
work for a fellow in Poland who decided to tip me what turned out to be a
small fraction of a US dollar. :-|

On Fri, Oct 21, 2022 at 11:41 AM Dave Taht via LibreQoS <
libreqos at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 6:36 PM Robert Chacón
> <robert.chacon at jackrabbitwireless.com> wrote:
> >
> > Agree with Dan on the prominent platforms being UISP, VISP, Splynx,
> Powercode, Sonar V1, and Sonar V2.
> >
> > Poll added here to gauge the community on which CRMs/NMSs are most
> desired.
> > https://github.com/rchac/LibreQoS/discussions/133
> >
> > Integration complete:
> >
> > UISP v1.2+
> >
> > Mostly Done:
> >
> > Splinx v1.3-alpha+ (work needed to confirm it works - volunteers
> welcome).
> >
> > Work in Progress:
> >
> > VISP
> >
> > GraphQL is an awful API but I'm trying my best with it.
> >
> > Not started yet:
> >
> > Powercode
> > Sonar V1
> > Sonar V2
>
> I see the poll there, and a sudden shift back to github (which I'm
> cool with), and who knows what the future holds for email 'round here.
>
> I did want to discuss that what was on my mind was a piece of feature
> set outside what I think most are thinking so far.
>
> At the tippy top of my list was multiple language support. For most of
> western europe, english suffices, allthough the brits can get a bit
> stuffy sometimes about american rather than "proper" english. :)
> However elsewhere in the world, where I think libreqos might become
> popular, it's a grabbag.
>
> So of these integrations above, which, if any, support Polish,
> Portuguese, Spanish, Croatian, or Russian? I am not sure what
> languages are common
> in Africa, although I think there's a strong french influence in kenya?
>
> The related problem in billing is currencies. Being able to not only
> bill in the native (or more than one) currency is very important
> elsewhere. Also payment schemes are fungible, a very common scheme for
> cellular is the gift card, and in Nicaragua, at least, the post is
> very unreliable and credit cards scarce, so banks and grocers take
> payments of various kinds.
>
> I did a LOT of i18n work in the 90s and am intimately familiar with
> the "iconv" _(string) facility we used to cope internationalizing C.
> I'm scared to look
> for what exists for pythoin and rust? or for that matter, web pages?
> It was extremely easy, once you started using iconv, to sit down with
> a multi-lingual speaker and get a decent translate done, without
> knowing anything about the code. I did the ardour.org translation with
> my spanish speaking gf over a couple weeks (it was GREAT FUN! for both
> of us)
>
>
>
>
> >
> > - Robert
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 6:31 PM dan via LibreQoS <
> libreqos at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> meh.  Industry features matter.
> >>
> >> Leading platforms:
> >> Ubiquiti's UISP (cause it's free).  somewhat mediocre so people like to
> migrate off of it.  zero support from ubiquiti but well documented API.
> >> VISP.  very popular, API available, they are happy to integrate.  This
> is the 'rising star'
> >> Splinx.  also quite popular, second up and comer.
> >> Powercode.  older, very popular, steady userbase and generally well
> liked..
> >> Sonar V1.  being depreciated, well liked but not long for this world.
> >> Sonar V2.  Complete rewrite, well well well hated.
> >>
> >> This is probably 95%+ of the wISP market right now.
> >>
> >> Fiber market is pretty similar but there are modules for a lot of other
> more generic platforms for fiber so I'd say the above list is more like
> maybe 60% of the minor league fiber players.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 6:25 PM Dave Taht via LibreQoS <
> libreqos at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> https://github.com/killbill/killbill
> >>>
> >>> bill.com is popular
> >>>
> >>> zillion others. ?
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
> >>>
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
> >>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> LibreQoS mailing list
> >>> LibreQoS at lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/libreqos
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> LibreQoS mailing list
> >> LibreQoS at lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/libreqos
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Robert Chacón
> > CEO | JackRabbit Wireless LLC
>
>
>
> --
> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> _______________________________________________
> LibreQoS mailing list
> LibreQoS at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/libreqos
>
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