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In this second post about software quality, I am going to talk about the comments sent by Jefferson Costa, from QAI Brasil. After reading my first post, The Quest for Quality Software, he sent the following questions:

What is “Quality Software”?
What are the factors involved in this measurement?

In regards to the measurement factors that determine if a software program is of high quality, ISO created a standard the clearly defines how to measure the quality of software. The so-called ISO/IEC 9126 standard goes far beyond stating that quality software is software without bugs. It is divided into six categories, each of them with a corresponding, fundamental question. They are as follows:

Functionality: Does it meet the requirements?
Reliability: Is it fail proof?
Usability: Is it user friendly?
Efficiency: Is it fast and lean?
Maintainability: Is it easy to modify?
Portability: Is it easy to deploy in different environments?

Therefore, we can say that these are the factors that enable quality measurement.

While reading about this standard, we can have an idea of what is quality software: it is software that combines each and all categories mentioned above. But the quality of software is also directly linked to the quality of processes used during development. But that’s another conversation, as we would have to talk about the project life cycle, CMM, etc.

Who knows, maybe in the next post? =)

Hello all! Remember when a while back I wrote about fun new cell phone translation technology in the post Cool! Where Can I Get One? Well folks, now we can all have our own translation technology literally at our fingertips.

Fotozio launched the first free iPhone photo translator application, PicTranslator, which turns the iPhone camera into a point-and-shoot translator. Foreign road signs, menus, maps, etc. can be translated with the push of a button – no phrasebook lookups or typing of foreign text required to understand and read printed text.

Screenshot of application on iPhone

Presently, the iPhone app only translates into English; however, it does translate from Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. It also provides pronunciation of the original text for French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

Fotozio admits that the technology is not perfect. For example, poor handwriting or low lighting may inhibit translation, but it hopes to overcome these setbacks with future technology. They also plan to deploy user input to make constant improvements to the application.

The PicTranslator video shows the application in action. PicTranslator is available through the iTunes App Store.

Hello People! I am going to start a series of posts talking about Software Quality.

Quality, today, is not just about a company having a market differential to sell more and increase profits, but a pre-requisite that must be conquered in order to get their product into the global market. Quality is a subject that is frequently discussed but rarely practiced. Missed deadlines, low productivity, inefficient quality control and high costs seem to be some of barriers that new technologies cannot overcome.

But in the end, what is software quality? In order to address the issue, it is necessary that we understand what “Quality Software” means exactly. There are several definitions. Some people tried to explain quality in a simple way and came up with definitions such as:

“Quality is to comply with customer requirements.”
“Quality is to anticipate and meet the customer’s wishes.”

We can also say that all the problems related to software quality fall in one of these two categories: lack of Quality of Compliance and lack of Quality of Performance.

Quality of Compliance refers to the adherence of the product to the purpose for which it was built. On the other hand, Quality of Performance refers to the capacity of the product to perform its desired function. In terms of software, this means lack of bugs, infrastructure (hardware) fault tolerance, user error tolerance, etc.

But why one should worry about software quality? There are some obvious reasons, as nobody likes to use a software program with bugs. These technical problems can cause enormous losses, such as the malfunctioning of a million dollar satellite. They can also cause multiple digit losses to a banking institution, prevent telephone carriers to provide long distance calls (and this has already happened with AT&T) or even cause a blackout in various cities. Ask people in India how inconvenient blackouts can be…

This is not all. Quality, today, is crucial for the survival of a company that wants to be successful in the global software market. An organization cannot succeed in this market if they do not produce quality software and if the clients do not have access to high quality products and services.

Contrary to what many think, the return on investment in quality is short. When quality improves, so does productivity, and the costs decrease due to lower rework rates and minimum waste. Not to mention the improvement in customer satisfaction, which often results in increased market share.

In the next post, I will talk about the costs of investing in quality. Stay tuned!

Imagine being able to read every sign in every country in every language. No more trying to decipher if means men’s or women’s bathroom or if “Animelles de mouton frites” is in fact something that you would like to eat.

Thanks to the team of engineers at Germany’s Karlsruhe University, this technology is slowly becoming available. They have developed a handheld device called the Sign Translator. This device uses recognition technology to detect signs in nature and then translate from the source to the target language. It detects signs initially by its edges and color. Then it detects characters within the parameters of the sign. A program within the device then translates the text.

One example of this in action is Nokia’s proposal to possibly launch Shoot-to-Translate (although they won’t say if and when), a camera phone with a text translator embedded inside. This translation software app allows users to take a picture of text and then the cell phone will translate the text for you.

Currently the “shoot and translate” app exists and is being sold as a separate application that can be added to your mobile camera phone. The application is a product of Linguatec, a language technology company that has launched a mobile version of its automatic text translator software. Shoot and Translate uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) features and is only compatible with Nokia phones at the moment (Do we see a partnership in the near future?). It is very new so there aren’t many reviews regarding the application’s ability to function well or not. So far it is available in the following language pairs:

I am sure in the near future we will start to see more and more mobile devices available with this new technology. Just another step in globalizing this little planet that we live on.

Who knows by the time I take a vacation to Korea, I won’t be duped into trying , the Korean the national dish?

There are two aspects to observe as far as fonts are concerned. They will be covered in the topics below.

a) Font Names Specified in the Code

Remember Unicode? I promised to talk about this subject, but had not done so yet… Be prepared, because the subject is so extensive that it is worth of another series. The advent of Unicode has made it possible to display thousands of distinct characters, rather than sets of ten characters, which is the case of ASCII.

Most fonts do not encompass the complex set of Unicode characters. Therefore, if the name of a font type displays only Latin characters, and no Japanese ideogram is directly inserted into the software (or Web page) programming, all the Japanese localized text will be displayed as question marks, squares or strange characters, inserted for word space adjustment.

As an example, consider the Google homepage in Japanese. The first case is displayed incorrectly, whereas the second one is shown with its correct character set.

Click to enlarge the image

Click to enlarge the image

One reason for not using font names in programming is that the desired font may not be available in the system where the text is being displayed. That is, if your client’s computer does not have the AuntieLucyBold font, the text can be displayed with a substitute font, which may cause visualization problems.

b) Font Sizes Specified in the Code

Some writing forms are more complex than others. The most complex forms need more pixels (or “points”) for correct display.

For instance, most Latin characters may be displayed in a 5×7 grid; Japanese characters, however, need at least a 16×16 grid for clear visualization. Chinese characters need a 24×24 grid!

The chart below illustrates why some characters displayed in small fonts become illegible.

Font Size

As you can see, it is impossible to understand a Japanese ideogram with a font of size 7, while the Latin character “E” is perfectly legible, regardless of its size.

In the next post we will talk about number formats… 1, 2, 3 and… Get ready!