tendersej

My current side project, a Computer Assisted Translation tool targeted at comics, manga, web toons, etc

(editing to add: currently NOT USABLE ON MOBILE)

As for your questions:

- No plans to open source it, unless I stop working on it.

As for the roadmap, it is extensive. In random order (both in terms of importance and release horizon) I am planning:

- exports as archives (if I remember properly, .cbr and .cbz formats are just renamed .rar and .zip respectively) as you mentioned

- proper font selection/customization (and eventually, bring your own) as you surmised

- workflow improvements (shortcuts, bulk commands vs current clicking item by item)

- specifying bubble type, from visual type (text in closed bubble opaque or not, text over background) to purpose (speech, onomatopeia, in-world written text, meta explanation) and source (who is talking, to whom, etc)

- moving the current "zoom" level from chapter to series: link to Knowledge Base, for easier lexical reference (with regards to man(ga|hwa|hua) names are often transcriptions of foreign words / names which are often translated back with varying degrees of success).

- multiplayer

- making the app not just usable but ergonomic on mobile screens

- a lot more.

I will add a roadmap section on the app.

Origin story:

I worked as a translator (handwritten medical forms, business communications) during my studies and got interested in what was considered the state of the art for CAT tools. I ended up building my own out of scripts, macros and rule-based processing because nothing provided the ease, flexibility and low overhead I was looking for.

With nekostrips, I am convinced I can deliver a compelling tool for comics.

If you or anyone else feels like discussing further, you can contact me through the form on the app, or on social networks.

- pay them a percentage of the price of the rental, which could not go below a certain amount,

- pay a yearly license (~3500€/year just for my country for a popular movie) per language audio track,

- handle on their own sending technicians to rip the masters to then host them on the platform.

I don’t exactly remember the minimum price per rental, but the economics didn’t make sense in terms of what we wanted to attempt, so we gave up. One would have to pay an enormous amount in upfront license costs without being able to generate a big volume of views by undercutting the competition in the case where technical excellence could allow us to cut prices.

Contributing to the Vancouver economy and rental market? This demographic could not care less, this does not factor in their decisions.

(I have only empirical evidence of this mindset, but I would be willing to expand on what I base my reasoning on.)

The problem at stake is that Chinese buyers are not buying property in Vancouver for speculative investment purposes only.

They see these properties as safe stores of value in order to diversify their risk profile in case the situation in Mainland China or their own financial situation goes down the gutter,

and / or to support their future potential effort to gain Canadian residency / citizenship for themselves or their kids,

and / or to vacation outside of mainland china once in a while.

Sure, this tax will hurt some of them, but the number of Mainland Chinese people with the means to write off such an amount as the cost of security is massive.

Source: lived in Mainland China for a few years, worked for this specific demographic.