Firefox / Thunderbird 3 Localization!
Ankit Patel
Welcome to the mozilla india localization group. This list will serve as a place for people to comment about localization efforts, community building ideas, marketing campaigns, conference attendance, and requests for community support. Please feel free to post new ideas and contribute when possible.
Our first big activity will be preparing for Foss.IN this December, I guess you have already seen the mail from Seth Bindernagel. So, just provide your inputs on that as well.
Now, the main purpose of sending out this e-mail is to start contributing with something, and that is Firefox/Thunderbird 3 Localization. This will be first major milestone for all of us I think.
I guess most of us are completely new to this localization. Very few (may be 2 or 3) of us have worked with the Firefox/Thunderbird localization. In fact, Mozilla localization is completely different from any other localization process, like Fedora, Gnome, kde, Openoffice, etc. Not only different, but bit difficult as well, because it requires 100% perfection in terms of translation or localization. So, it's going to be very challenging task for all of us. Let's face the challenge! :)
For indic languages, there are just two languages completely done, and that is Punjabi & Gujarati. Bengali & Hindi is on the way I think. Rest of the languages has to start working from scratch. Everyone, Just go through this plan page. Entire process of localization of Firefox/Thunderbird 3 is described in detail over there: http://www.indianoss.org/modules/xoopsfaq/index.php?cat_id=1#q8 As, it's a huge task and on-going process untill Firefox 3 gets released, i think we should set some deadline for this work. Let's consider 31st October as due for this initially. After that we will have to just update the minor changes...That's it!
Btw, the primary mailing list for all locaization related issues is dev-...@lists.mozilla.org. There we will get Mozilla localization lead (Pike - Axel Hecht) and many other experineced members to help us with localization. So, in case we won't be able to solve your issues here, we will take them to the parent mailing list.
So, let's jump into this! As this may be completely new to you, please ask me if you need any kind of help.
All the Best!
Ankit Patel
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Axel Hecht
Hi all,
thanks to Ankit for reaching out here.
Ankit and I chatted a bit about targets and timelines. Right now,
Firefox 3 isn't even in beta. We expect to have three betas, and we're
going to have string freeze in en-US two weeks before the code freeze
for the last beta. The schedule on
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Schedule will be kept up-to-date, and
you can tell, it's not really precise right now. That's not bad, as it's
pretty much all we know right now. There are plans, sure, but in terms
of what we know, that page is complete.
Long story, short end, Firefox 3 is very much a moving target, and will
remain to be that for a bit. M9 is going to be in the middle of this
month, which may give us more clarity.
That said, Ankit and I agreed to soften things a bit, in terms of
target. Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 have most of their localizable strings
in common, so when you're starting, you shouldn't have to bother too
much about which you target, as long as you make your way around the
parts with the most glaring differences. I'm going to look at the
differences and create patches to track those in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397506. If you look at
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=282293&action=diff&collapsed=1,
that's the attachment viewed as 'Diff', collapsed, you can easily see
which files are having removed content between fx2 and granparadiso a8.
I'd suggest that you just start by using the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH, and
avoid areas where we already remove content for fx3, and once you're in
good shape on the rest, say, by the end of the month, we can look at
each localization individually, and make a call whether it makes sense
to get out to users this year and invest a little bit of work in Firefox
2 or if Firefox 3 is a better fit. We don't expect the latter to come to
users this year though. Let's hope that we have a better idea on how
things with Fx3 go by the end of the month, too.
Thanks for your support, and hope to see you all at FOSS.IN, if all goes
well, I should be there.
Axel
Seth Bindernagel
I'm excited to read about all the enthusiasm around localization in India right now. In addition to what Ankit and Axel have written, I'd like to make sure you know about some of the resources available to your teams.
Mozilla has put in place a server in our Amsterdam colo facility that localizers can use to store files and collaborate on localizations. If you are interested in accessing the server, please file a bug in Bugzilla under “mozilla.org” in Client Support, and then list Localization Server in the component section. In the bug, please ask for access to the server and you will be set up. You can read more about the server we put in place at my blog post here:
http://blog.mozilla.com/seth/2007/01/12/more-on-the-l10n-server/
We would love to put other tools in place or provide other resources that help empower you as community members. Seriously, if you have any ideas or requests, please send them my way and we will see what is possible. You can read more about our program at my blog:
Hope all is going well and thanks for all of your effort!
Kind regards,
Seth