we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be released somewhere in June or July.
The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the question basically comes down to:
How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amount of missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most affected by this are: da, en-GB, gu-IN, mk, mn, sl, tr, zh-TW
So I'd really like to hear from you guys!
But of course this question also affects all other locales, as I assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or beta releases. So I'd like to hear from you as well.
I'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here.
Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
Please, please don't end up with the release in july due to the holiday season starting beginning of july. I am not planning on bringing my laptop to the campsite or hotelroom :) . If not possible, skip to the end of august.
Concerning the files to translate, I guess we will keep up to date, so no problem there.
There is still the work to be done on translating landingpages (at least) and perhaps other files, maybe even the complete www.mozillamessaging.com. Can you give an estimate on that too?
We also would like to get some time to create pressreleases before the release of TB. Depending on the material delivered by Mozilla marketing this might take a week or so for a few moments a day.
> we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for > the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be > released somewhere in June or July.
> The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
> We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related > changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the > question basically comes down to:
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
> This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of > our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amount > of missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most > affected by this are: da, en-GB, gu-IN, mk, mn, sl, tr, zh-TW
> So I'd really like to hear from you guys!
> But of course this question also affects all other locales, as I > assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external > QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or beta > releases. So I'd like to hear from you as well.
> I'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here.
> Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty > much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB > community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
> Hi Simon, > Please, please don't end up with the release in july due to the > holiday season starting beginning of july. > I am not planning on bringing my laptop to the campsite or > hotelroom :) . If not possible, skip to the end of august.
Skipping to August just because of the summer holiday season seems unreasonable to me, but this kind of information is exactly the kind of information we need to make a good decision here.
It would be great if you could be even more specific, e.g. how many days before the release date do you need the string freeze to happen so that you can translate all the missing strings, start QA activities, etc.???
> Concerning the files to translate, I guess we will keep up to date, > so no problem there.
Great.
> There is still the work to be done on translating landingpages (at > least) and perhaps other files, maybe even the complete > www.mozillamessaging.com. Can you give an estimate on that too?
Pascal Chevrel has taken over the web l10n stuff for Thunderbird from me. So he is the person to ask for this. I will send him a mail though that he should announce his plans for Thunderbird web l10n here.
> We also would like to get some time to create press releases before > the release of TB. Depending on the material delivered by Mozilla > marketing this might take a week or so for a few moments a day.
Right. I will contact the MoMo marketing manager, Rafael Rebron, on when he plans to have this information ready.
Simon Paquet wrote: > Fryske Firefox wrote on 26. Mar 2009:
>> Hi Simon,
>> Please, please don't end up with the release in july due to the >> holiday season starting beginning of july. >> I am not planning on bringing my laptop to the campsite or hotelroom >> :) . If not possible, skip to the end of august.
> Skipping to August just because of the summer holiday season seems > unreasonable to me, but this kind of information is exactly the kind > of information we need to make a good decision here.
> It would be great if you could be even more specific, e.g. how many > days before the release date do you need the string freeze to happen > so that you can translate all the missing strings, start QA activities, > etc.???
Hi Simon,
Another thought, how early can you make the string freeze? Can you move that up?
>> Please, please don't end up with the release in july due to the >> holiday season starting beginning of july. >> I am not planning on bringing my laptop to the campsite or hotelroom >> :) . If not possible, skip to the end of august.
> Skipping to August just because of the summer holiday season seems > unreasonable to me, but this kind of information is exactly the kind > of information we need to make a good decision here.
There are further drawbacks from a marketing point of view, too. Like, France is going to be at the beach at that time, so no matter how much buzz you're able to create, it will go to /dev/null for a rather important market for TB.
> we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for > the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be > released somewhere in June or July.
Nice! :-)
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
FWIW, in the past weeks I put the L10N work on hold for toolkit, TB, SM and Calendar due to other tasks. When I got back to it, I found about 150 strings overall to review/translate. I was able to get in sync for them in one day, maybe 6 hours of actual work. It is true, however, that some of those strings were the same between TB and SM, so I just had to confirm translation suggestions in one of them. Also, many of them were accesskeys, for which I'm working in a new feature in MozillaTranslator that helped me a lot to get them done.
All in all, I think that a whole week should be enough for 1000 string changes, and 10 days for 1500, which is the biggest figure I've seen for the locales you mention. Of course, that implies that no work is done to cut down those figures before string freeze is in place, but ideally those teams should try to give some time to TB L10N before that.
Besides that, I'd estimate another full week for all teams testing and cleaning up their localizations (accesskeys, dialog sizes, and so).
And, as it has been already mentioned, web L10N will require manpower, too (although, in my experience, it is easier to distribute that work among several members).
BTW, congratulations to Thunderbird team for going forward with a great new version. :-)
> The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
> We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related > changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the > question basically comes down to:
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
es-AR is green. I try to keep it green almost daily. We just need some time for QA, but only a few days after string freeze.
"si" is green and we will keep it green at least weekly. We have involved in some QA activities since Alpha. Hope, we can manage with reasonable time frame.
> we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for > the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be > released somewhere in June or July.
> The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
> We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related > changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the > question basically comes down to:
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
> This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of > our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amount > of missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most > affected by this are: da, en-GB, gu-IN, mk, mn, sl, tr, zh-TW
> So I'd really like to hear from you guys!
> But of course this question also affects all other locales, as I > assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external > QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or beta > releases. So I'd like to hear from you as well.
> I'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here.
> Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty > much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB > community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
> we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for > the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be > released somewhere in June or July.
> The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
> We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related > changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the > question basically comes down to:
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?
> This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of > our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amount > of missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most > affected by this are: da, en-GB, gu-IN, mk, mn, sl, tr, zh-TW
> So I'd really like to hear from you guys!
> But of course this question also affects all other locales, as I > assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external > QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or beta > releases. So I'd like to hear from you as well.
> I'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here.
> Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty > much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB > community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
I try to keep tb3 green all the time. But still, some accesskeys need more QA. For the landing pages and related web page, it depends how much page and how long the text it will be. I think I need 1-2 week or so when Firefox 3 was released, mainly because it has to be understandable between long time Firefox user and first time user. And also it needs to use "marketable" words, which suits for both type of user.
> we are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers > for the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled > to be released somewhere in June or July.
> The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
> We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related > changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the > question basically comes down to:
> How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release > date?
I want to give you a short followup on the responses that I've received (either here or via mail). The feedback for the minimum amount of time needed for localizers before the final release date ranged between one and five (1-5) weeks.
Given that TB3 will likely be released during the summer holiday season, I think I'm going to be pretty conservative here. So I will recommend to the Thunderbird core developers, that the string freeze for TB3 will happen five weeks before the first release candidate (RC1) is scheduled.
More on a detailed schedule, once I get feedback from TB developers on this.
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