--- mozilla-l10n 2003-02-FOSDEM
+++ mozilla-l10n 2004-02-FOSDEM
@@ -a,b +x,y @@
Well, let's make it a small bit less geeky ;-). So what has happened in the last year of Mozilla L10n?
- big manual localeVersion change patches: locale packs from different Mozilla versions are incompatible because of
changed, added or removed texts in the UI. To avoid crashes or other side-effects, we have internal
versioning of locale in chrome registry, fed into it by contents.rdf files.
Those were previously hardcoded and I did big manual patches to change them. After I found a way to
insert the versions at build-time and patched the whole tree to do that using the C preprocessor
(bug 154927),
I was told we should use the XUL preprocessor. I made that change recently
(bug 232011)
and set tinderboxen on fire (as some of you may remember)...
After some help from tinderbox admins and bsmedberg (who had to fix make-jars.pl for a bug I triggered),
we should now have that long-standing bug finally resolved (and themes will follow that way soon -
bug 234014).
BTW, all chrome version strings are now defined in
mozilla/config/chrome-versions.sh.
- XPI error -239: When installing our locale XPI files, we often ran into XPInstall
error -239 (CHROME_REGISTRY_ERROR), especially on unix machines. This had been happening quite
frequently for at least 18 months
(bug 109044),
and noone had an idea why that happened, when it started magically disappearing in some cases last summer.
DocWilco then filed a patch
for a case where he was still seeing (and which was "a tough one to crack"), and we didn't hear a lot about
that error again. He also improved reporting
of what happens when it still hits a -239 in a followup.
Another nasty problem is history now.
- more attention to L10n: Starting with last December, L10n got more attention of
mozilla.org staff than in previous times. It all started with a staff meeting on 2003-12-08 (see the
"minutes" posting):
*Localisation packs*
- Quarterly/monthly IRC meetings for l10n (blizzard, bart)
- What is our end goal for internationalization?
- Goal: 5 or 6 languages we ship pretty regularly, of reasonable to good
quality
- Start incrementally
- Agreed: translations need to be in CVS; too separated from release
process
- chofmann to write a message to l10n newsgroup:
- 1) Tell people how to nominate bugs to drivers
- 2) Mention monthly IRC chat, hosted by chofmann
(gerv query: what time to have this? Hard to pick one which is
good for everyone, because of timezone issues)
- 3) If you have a localised version ready 1 week after 1.6, let us
know now (or then) and we'll try and get it on the CD.
- 4) There will be a string freeze after beta - it's a done deal
- 5) We want your localisation by 1 week after our planned release
date (But CD gets burned 2 days before we release)
- We need a simple post-freeze string change process - Bugzilla keyword,
post to newsgroup etc.
The first L10n IRC meeting was on 2003-12-15, The 1.6 CD shipped with a few important / finished-in-time
localization XPI packs, we're still hoping further actions will happen. The first string freeze (1.7b -> 1.7)
is still to happen, and getting translations into CVS is actually a quite old bug report,
bug 57878,
that still doesn't have much attention, as well as the one for
getting German L10n into CVS
(bug 179949).
Let's hope the positive movement of December can be carried on into the future.
- Mozilla Europe: Just last week, the Mozilla Foundation Europe
has been launched, having a multi-language web site, and that probably will
attract even more users to localized versions of Mozilla and its derivates.
We'll see what this means to our L10n projects...