coordination of localization efforts
Asa Dotzler
and localizability has always been on that list. In the early days we had
resources at Netscape that produced localizations for a few international
audiences -- usually French, German, and Japanese. It wasn't long before the
Mozilla l10n community solidified and surpassed Netscape's efforts with the
Mozilla 1.0.x release available in more than three dozen locale versions and
today the Mozilla Application Suite, across all versions, is represented in
almost 120 locales.
The biggest complaint we got about the Mozilla Application Suite localization
process was that many of the locales came in long after the Mozilla en-US
release. With Firefox, we took that complaint to heart and worked to get the
localizations into CVS so that we could use the Mozilla build mechanism to make
official localizations at the same time as the official en-US builds. We've made
great progress, shipping dozens of locales simultaneously with the en-US Firefox
1.0 release. With 1.5 we're going to do even better -- more locales and
Thunderbird too!
But getting this automation set up has only solved part of the problem. We still
have many communication difficulties and this causes a lot of stress for both
the locale teams and the build, release, and QA teams. Chase, myself, Sarah,
Marcia, Jay, bsmedberg, and others have all tried to commit time to working
directly with the locale teams and keeping up on the goings on in npm.l10n. This
hasn't been sufficient and we've all felt the pain.
Well, we've got some great news. Axel Hecht, longtime Mozilla contributor and
l10n advocate, has joined Mozilla to act as a liaison between the locale teams
and Mozilla. Axel will work with the locale teams and make sure that the
concerns of the locale teams are raised in the appropriate meetings (drivers
meetings, release coordination meetings, etc.) and will help to better integrate
all of our efforts so that we can stop thinking of Mozilla and the l10n
community as separate.
I want to thank Axel and welcome him to his new job with Mozilla. I'm sure you
all will find Axel's focus on l10n issues and communication a welcome
improvement to our process.
- A
Pavel Franc
> sure you all will find Axel's focus on l10n issues and communication a
> welcome improvement to our process.
This is really great news. It was always pleasure to work with Pike. And
I'm glad that MoFo/MoCo finally realized that there is a strong need for
person in charge and no semi-speaker is enough.
Hurrah to our new figter for our rights =)
Pavel Franc
---
Czilla.cz
Czech Mozilla Project
Mad Maks
great news
Mad Maks
Simon Paquet
> Well, we've got some great news. Axel Hecht, longtime Mozilla
> contributor and l10n advocate, has joined Mozilla to act as a liaison
> between the locale teams and Mozilla. Axel will work with the locale
> teams and make sure that the concerns of the locale teams are raised in
> the appropriate meetings (drivers meetings, release coordination
> meetings, etc.) and will help to better integrate all of our efforts so
> that we can stop thinking of Mozilla and the l10n community as separate.
Congratulations Axel, this is really great news!
--
Simon Paquet
Ognyan Kulev
> Well, we've got some great news. Axel Hecht, longtime Mozilla
> contributor and l10n advocate, has joined Mozilla to act as a liaison
> between the locale teams and Mozilla. Axel will work with the locale
> teams and make sure that the concerns of the locale teams are raised in
> the appropriate meetings (drivers meetings, release coordination
> meetings, etc.) and will help to better integrate all of our efforts so
> that we can stop thinking of Mozilla and the l10n community as separate.
It's great that you get more attention on l10n :-)
My biggest wish is to use PO files only, but let's leave that big task
for now.
What I would like to see soon and is relatively easy to achieve is
"hard" rule about using ".accesskey" suffix in entity names. Currently,
it's mess. I would like ".accesskey" suffix to always be used for
".label" entities. This is to ease all automatic tools that try to
parse Mozilla l10n files (and convert them back and forth to PO :-)
Regards,
ogi
Axel Hecht
> Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> Well, we've got some great news. Axel Hecht, longtime Mozilla
>> contributor and l10n advocate, has joined Mozilla to act as a liaison
>> between the locale teams and Mozilla. Axel will work with the locale
>> teams and make sure that the concerns of the locale teams are raised
>> in the appropriate meetings (drivers meetings, release coordination
>> meetings, etc.) and will help to better integrate all of our efforts
>> so that we can stop thinking of Mozilla and the l10n community as
>> separate.
>
> It's great that you get more attention on l10n :-)
>
> My biggest wish is to use PO files only, but let's leave that big task
> for now.
This is not only a big task, but also not a cure for all problems. I
guess, it's just a different compromise.
That said, I know and understand that the currently available tools are
not as good as po-based tools may be. The good news is, I got an OK to
work on tools, and I intend to do so once the release frenzy has cooled
down a bit. L10n coordination work is my main responsibility, and if
that needs time, everything else drops.
> What I would like to see soon and is relatively easy to achieve is
> "hard" rule about using ".accesskey" suffix in entity names. Currently,
> it's mess. I would like ".accesskey" suffix to always be used for
> ".label" entities. This is to ease all automatic tools that try to
> parse Mozilla l10n files (and convert them back and forth to PO :-)
That's probably a good idea, there seems to be some confusion between
accesskeys and shortcuts, too. I suggest that you file a tracking bug,
and make that depend on product/component specific bugs as you have
fixes. We may have a l10n-friendly coding section on devmo, too, coming
to think of it.
Axel
Axel Hecht
I'll come up with a more lengthy post later on, but there are changes
that are worth noting right away.
As you can see, I switched my avatar for working on .l10n. This comes
with a few email addresses that are new, you can now reach me at l10n,
axel, axel.hecht, and pike (at) mozilla.com. I created a bugzilla ID for
l10n (at) mozilla.com, and l10n@moz uniquely completes to that, so if
you have issues that require l10n tracking, just CC that. If you like
bugspam, you can watch that, too. I will decide on a case-by-case basis
whether I CC firef...@hotmail.com, which is the bugzilla ID that l10n
owners should watch.
Axel
Toni Hermoso Pulido
Me too! Good decision from MoFo/MoCo and congrutalations to Axel!
--
* Toni Hermoso Pulido
------------------------------------------------------
web: http://drac.homelinux.org
email: ton...@softcatala.org
gpg: B67B43DC
planet: http://planeta.softcatala.org
------------------------------------------------------
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change
--O.Butler
------------------------------------------------------
Robert Kaiser
> sure you all will find Axel's focus on l10n issues and communication a
> welcome improvement to our process.
I welcome Axel in this function as well, and I hope his always-good
communication with MLP will stay that way and we will be able to improve
the Mozilla L10n processes once again.
Thanks for being with us and many thanks for MoCo for making all that
possible!
In hope of continuing improvements in the L10n area,
Robert Kaiser
Ricardo Palomares Martinez
> That said, I know and understand that the currently available tools are
> not as good as po-based tools may be. The good news is, I got an OK to
> work on tools, and I intend to do so once the release frenzy has cooled
> down a bit. L10n coordination work is my main responsibility, and if
> that needs time, everything else drops.
Although it may be too soon to ask this, could you tell us a bit about
your plans for L10N tools?
Regards.
--
If it's true that we are here to help others,
then what exactly are the OTHERS here for?
Axel Hecht
> Axel Hecht escribió:
>> That said, I know and understand that the currently available tools are
>> not as good as po-based tools may be. The good news is, I got an OK to
>> work on tools, and I intend to do so once the release frenzy has cooled
>> down a bit. L10n coordination work is my main responsibility, and if
>> that needs time, everything else drops.
>
>
> Although it may be too soon to ask this, could you tell us a bit about
> your plans for L10N tools?
I plan to have something like a compare-locales builder for eclipse,
with flags and stuff like that. I do plan to do that stuff incrementally
and be open to contributions.
Axel