!! 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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