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5 | <meta name="Author" content="KaiRo - Robert Kaiser"> |
6 | <title>L10n talk - FOSDEM 2003 - Mozilla Meeting</title> |
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17 | |
18 | <h1>current problems with L10n work (helpwanted!)</h1> |
19 | |
20 | <div class="explanation"> |
21 | As always, there are some more or less big problems in current Mozilla L10n: |
22 | <ul> |
23 | <li><b>Hardcoded content</b>: Some projects still have hardcoded un-localizable code in their UI files, |
24 | e.g. Calendar and ChatZilla - but also Browser and MailNews have a bunch of those left. |
25 | A big part of this is low-hanging fruit for contributors and blocks L10n severily sometimes. |
26 | <br>All relevant bugs (should) have the "L12y" keyword set. |
27 | Query for <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?keywords_type=allwords&keywords=L12y&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED">All bugs with L12y keyword set</a> |
28 | (44 bugs found as of Fri Feb 7 06:30:17 PST 2003).</li> |
29 | <li><b>Ignorance</b>: Many US programmers think "It works for me and my collegues, and so it's alright" - |
30 | and they forget about i18n issues or things like locale switching altogether. |
31 | <br>I had to fix breakage of the pref panel four times from 2002-03-31 to 2002-08-26 - |
32 | the FastLoad workaround (see below) is the fith issue that broke it during that time span! |
33 | See <a href="http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla/extensions/content-packs/resources/content/pref-contentpacks.xul">CVS Log of the pref panel</a>.</li> |
34 | <li><b>Content packs</b>: Content packs (a.k.a. "region" packs) were a somehow interesting idea, but they |
35 | aren't used by anyone. 99.999999% of our users only use one language pack and one content pack together. |
36 | They should get re-merged into one pack again, the files should stay seperate though, as it's quite good |
37 | to have all URLs that are used in the UI seperated from the other content. |
38 | <br>It looks as even Netscape, who had originally created that split-up has no interest any more in those |
39 | content packs. It even blocks me from renaming the generic German language pack to a simple "de.jar". |
40 | <li><b>localeVersion updates</b>: locale packs from different Mozilla versions are incompatible because of |
41 | changed, added or removed texts in the UI. Quite some time ago, we introduced a localeVersion attribute |
42 | in chrome registry that has to fit, so that Mozilla knows it has a working set of chrome files. |
43 | <br>So far, so good. Lots of contents.rdf files in the tree carry that information, which is hardcoded |
44 | there, and it's a <b>big pain to update</b> them for every version. |
45 | See <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175853" title="Update localeVersion strings for 1.2 final - and do it correctly!">bug 175853</a>, |
46 | <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185698" title="localeVersion update for 1.3b on trunk">bug 185698</a> |
47 | and <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154927" title="automate localeVersion updates based on milestone.txt">bug 154927</a>.</li> |
48 | <li><b>no fallback mechanism</b>: If people would try to use some non-fitting locale packs, they get crashes |
49 | and XML errors because we have no fallback if lookup for a locale string fails somewhere (string or file not found). |
50 | See <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71797" title="Mozilla fails to fallback to another skin or locale if the preferences point to a non-existant one">bug 71797</a>.</li> |
51 | <li><b>XUL FastLoad problems</b>: XUL FastLoad fails to update the strings after a locale switch. |
52 | There is a workaround in place, which also fails sometimes, and was promised to be replaced by a fix for 1.1 final. |
53 | See <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142623" title="No reload of Language strings due to XUL FastLoad">bug 142623</a>.</li> |
54 | <li><b>XPI installation problems - error -239</b>: This bug is a really strange thing, and does hurt us mainly on unix. |
55 | When installing an XPI on most unix systems and some other systems as well, it fails with |
56 | error -239 (CHROME_REGISTRY_ERROR) for no obvious reason. |
57 | <br>We're using a workaround for unix, but this workaround prohibits installing a new locale into the |
58 | profile directory, which would be needed for non-root users in the common case. |
59 | See <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109044" title="Install error -239 registering chrome on some systems">bug 109044</a>.</li> |
60 | <li><b>No stringbundles from non-privileged files</b>: This started to hurt me when trying to make about:plugins |
61 | localizable (see <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56863" title="make about:plugins localizable">bug 56863</a>). |
62 | In fact, I had to give about:plugins full chrome privileges just to access stringbundles - this opened |
63 | a potential security issue though. Even if about:plugins might go a different way now (HTML created by C++), |
64 | this is a potential issue for other areas. |
65 | See <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98298" title="do not have stringbundle access from about:plugins">bug 98298</a>.</li> |
66 | <li><b>Resources</b>: Currently, there's no single collection of documentation, tools, etc. for L10n people. |
67 | We're currently working on getting such a thing up and running now though. |
68 | See <a href="http://l10ntools.mozdev.org/">l10ntools.mozdev.org</a>.</li> |
69 | </ul> |
70 | This should be some points to start for contributors who want to help us, and an overview what's bugging |
71 | us most currently. I'm sure the list is not complete, but it's what came to my mind when writing the slides... |
72 | </div> |
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