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!! FWD: Letter of Invitation: Bringing Mozilla Localization Project (MLP) toward M14 for public consumption



tao@netscape.com (Tao Cheng) wrote in <388E3108.B95CAAC2@netscape.com>:

>Hello, all:
>
>
>Thank you for participating the Mozilla Localization Project. In less
>than 6 months, we have sixteen languages registered and two localization
>tools, "MozExpTool" and "MozillaTranslator", submitted and utilized by
>localization contributors. This is definite a great encouragement of the
>open source project. It makes me so proud of being a participant of this
>project.
>
>At the same time, after months of continuous efforts, the core
>technology of the Mozilla is getting mature. The stability and the
>performance of milestone builds improves release after release. It seems
>to be the time to bring the Mozilla Localization Project a step further.
>
>Details follow.
>
>     Primary Goal
>
>     Utilize the contributed localization tools to localize the
>     Mozilla client M14 build into all the sixteen registered
>     languages.
>
>     As of now, we are at the end of M13 milestone development
>     phase. In a few days, M13 will be on wire for public
>     consumption. Since this is the first public release after
>     Mozilla Alpha Release, lots features and improvement have been
>     checked in. It is safer to expect that the milestone release
>     after M13 be more stable and robust. Therefore, I'd like to
>     invite you to localize the M14 and ship all languages in the
>     same time frame as the English build. In other words, let's
>     ship all our language packs within 15 days, after the US build
>     ships. Although, nothing could prevent us from even shipping
>     language packs simultaneously with the US build!
>
>     Status of the Language Packs
>
>     There are sixteen languages registered on the "Localizing
>     Mozilla" page,
>     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/xul-how2l10n.html#mlp.
>     They include Bosnian (bosnian-BA), Brazilian (Portuguese),
>     Catalan, Czech, Danish (da-DK), French, Georgian, German,
>     Greek, Hawaiian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish (es-CO
>     and es-ES), and Thai. While Czech, German, Japanese, and
>     Polish are at M12,  Thai is at M10, Danish in M9, and Bosnian
>     at M8. There is great possibility that a Japanese M13 build
>     will be delivered soon after the US bit gets on wire.
>
>     Status of the Localization and Leveraging Tools
>
>     There are two contributed tools so far: the MozExpTool (by
>     Jordi Mas) and the MozillaTranslator (by Henrik Lynggaard).
>
>        * MozExpTool. A VisualC++ based project. It is
>          designed to address the localization and leveraging
>          need of languages in single-byte charsets. Both
>          source code and WIN32 binary are available. More
>          detailed technical spec can be found here,
>          http://www.rebost.net/mozexptool/ .
>        * MozillaTranslator is a GUI-based Localization and
>          Leveraging tool written in Java. Although still in
>          development stage, it is suitable for both
>          single-byte and double-byte charsets including all
>          Latin-1, 2, and CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean):
>          nearly all languages covered by Unicode. The package
>          is available as a single jar file together with a
>          DOS batch driver. JDK.1.2.2 is needed to run the
>          program.
>
>     How to proceed
>
>     In the past, most of us work independently and randomly pick a
>     milestone build to work on. The drawback of this is that there
>     is little coordination among the team and result in less
>     productivity. To avoid such problem in the future, I'd like to
>     suggest that we participate in a more organized fashion:
>
>        * Let's identify what is needed in the process of
>          localization and leveraging and distribute them among the
>          team. Here are a list of things I can think of now:
>             o Use localization/leveraging tools to improve our
>               productivity. It'd be a waste of time and error
>               prone if we need to localize each build from
>               scratch. With the MozillaTranslator or MozExpTool,
>               you can identify which strings are new and need to
>               be localized.
>             o Compile a glossary file from previous releases
>               (including Communicator 4.x) for reference.
>               Translation consistency and quality can be greatly
>               improved if there are glossary files for reference.
>             o QA the localization results. This is to have the
>               language pack reviewed and tested so that bugs or
>               flows can be identified beforehand and thus avoid
>               respinning of the localized builds.
>             o Push the localized build up to Mozilla.org's FTP
>               site. Once we push the localized builds up to the
>               FTP sites, I expect more people to download and use
>               them since the FTP download sites get more
>               visibility than the MLP's home page.
>             o Make formal announcement. In addition to the FTP
>               download sites, we can use the open source community
>               channels such as formal Mozilla Release
>               announcement, visible links in the Mozilla download
>               page, articles in the Mozillazine, and Mozilla
>               newsgroups. Other channels such as locale-specific
>               newsgroups are also good places to make our
>               contribution visible.
>        * In theory, we'd like to have them all and utilize them in
>          localizing M14. In reality, let's take advantage of the
>          best we can do and give it a shot.
>        * Please pass this invitation to the people you know might
>          be interested in participating MLP.
>        * Down load latest Mozilla Releases . M13 build is coming
>          out of the door. I'd encourage you to start with M13 and
>          then use the tools to leverage the results to M14 which
>          is expected to be a more mature and stable build.
>        * Follow the instructions in "Localizing Mozilla",
>          http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl/xul-how2l10n.html.
>
>     Coordination
>
>        * Direct comments, feed backs, and questions to
>          news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.l10n.
>        * Real time chats, IRC session, will be held weekly
>          (or from time to time when needed) to facilitate
>          project coordination, discussion and experience
>          sharing.
>
>     Mozilla Open Source client v.s. Netscape branded client
>
>     There will be planned beta releases (and the final RTM) of
>     Netscape branded builds. Netscape might choose to localize
>     some or all of them into languages such as German, French,
>     Japanese, etc... See  FAQ for more information.
>
>Please direct questions and feedbacks to
>news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.l10n. Again, feel free
>to pass this invitation to people you know might be interested.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Tao Cheng
>
>
>


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