April 27, 2009
Thunderbird 3.0b3 schedule change
The Thunderbird developers have decided that there are enough blockers that aren't going to make it by tomorrow that beta3 (and therefore the string freeze as well) will have to be slipped by some number of weeks. By how many weeks is currently unclear. We'll hopefully know more within the next several days and expect to have a proposal soon...
April 21, 2009
Localizing the values in search-attributes.properties for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
A few weeks ago in mid-March we came across a fix (for bug 483629) that changed an existing string without changing the entity name. Instead of fixing that, we opted for going into the direction of fixing all the strings in
What this means for new localizers is, that the entity names are now much more self-explaining than they were before. However for existing localizers this means, that a lot of new strings have shown up, which you will now have to tackle again. We believe that this is the right solution for the reasons outlined above.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the corresponding thread in the mozilla l10n newsgroup.
- mail/locales/en-US/chrome/messenger/search-attributes.properties
- suite/locales/en-US/chrome/mailnews/search-attributes.properties
What this means for new localizers is, that the entity names are now much more self-explaining than they were before. However for existing localizers this means, that a lot of new strings have shown up, which you will now have to tackle again. We believe that this is the right solution for the reasons outlined above.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the corresponding thread in the mozilla l10n newsgroup.
April 15, 2009
Updated Thunderbird 3 beta3 release schedule for localizers
There's been a slight change of plans for the Thunderbird 3 beta3 release. The release schedule has been pushed back a week. That means that the new release schedule is now (All dates use time of 23:59 PST - l10n-relevant dates are bold):
- Slushy String freeze date: 2009-04-28 (Tuesday)
- Slushy Code Freeze date: 2009-04-30 (Thursday)
- Firm String / Code freeze date: 2009-05-05 (Tuesday)
- l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 freeze date: 2009-05-07 (Thursday)
- Target Build Ship date: 2009-05-12 (Tuesday)
- All string-related work should done by the slushy string freeze date
- All other code-related work plus the late-string work should ideally be done by the slushy code freeze date
- The firm freeze date will be for fixing remaining bugs and regressions found in the nightlies
- The l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 date would be the last time by which we would accept changes in localizations
- Late string changes will require an additional approval by the beta3 release driver Dan Mosedale (dmose on IRC)
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to respond here.
March 30, 2009
Thunderbird 3 beta3 release schedule for localizers
The Thunderbird developers have finalized the release schedule for Thunderbird beta3. Here it is (All dates use time of 23:59 PST - l10n-relevant dates are bold):
- Slushy String freeze date: 2009-04-21 (Tuesday)
- Slushy Code Freeze date: 2009-04-23 (Thursday)
- Firm String / Code freeze date: 2009-04-28 (Tuesday)
- l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 freeze date: 2009-04-30 (Thursday)
- Target Build Ship date: 2009-05-05 (Tuesday)
- All string-related work should done by the slushy string freeze date
- All other code-related work plus the late-string work should ideally be done by the slushy code freeze date
- The firm freeze date will be for fixing remaining bugs and regressions found in the nightlies
- The l10n-mozilla-1.9.1 date would be the last time by which we would accept changes in localizations
- Late string changes will require an additional approval by the beta3 release driver Dan Mosedale (dmose on IRC)
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to respond here.
March 26, 2009
Feedback required: Time needed for TB3 l10n release preparation?
The Thunderbird developers are currently discussing the potential schedule for localizers for the final release of Thunderbird 3, which is currently scheduled to be released somewhere in June or July.
The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the question basically comes down to:
"How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?"
This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amountof missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most affected by this are: Danish, English (UK), Gujarati, Macedonian, Mongolian, Slovenian, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional)
So we'd really like to hear from you guys!
But of course this question also affects all other locales, as we assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or betareleases. So we'd like to hear from all other locales as well.
We'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here. Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
Please direct all your feedback to the discussion of this matter in the l10n newsgroup. That will make it much easier to track all your feedback
The main issue currently is the overall string freeze date for TB3.
We currently do not have a good feeling on how many string-related changes might still be needed for the final TB3 release. So the question basically comes down to:
"How much time do you need at a minimum before the final release date?"
This question goes mostly to those of you, who have not been part of our alpha or beta releases so far and therefore have a large amountof missing and obsolete strings left. The localizations that are most affected by this are: Danish, English (UK), Gujarati, Macedonian, Mongolian, Slovenian, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional)
So we'd really like to hear from you guys!
But of course this question also affects all other locales, as we assume that you guys want to do a lot more internal and external QA work on your localizations than you did for the alpha or betareleases. So we'd like to hear from all other locales as well.
We'd really appreciate a broad feedback from the l10n community here. Please remember, that this is the first major release for pretty much everyone, who is currently in a leadership position in the TB community. So we really need your feedback to make a good decision.
Please direct all your feedback to the discussion of this matter in the l10n newsgroup. That will make it much easier to track all your feedback
March 17, 2009
On the road to 55 locales
Seth recently blogged about Firefox reaching 70 supported locales. That's very impressive indeed.
So, some of you might ask, how is Thunderbird holding up?
The short answer: We're doing great!
The long answer: We're currently at 54 supported locales and are closing in on the 55th (Bengali). Within the last six months, we've added 10 locales:
So, some of you might ask, how is Thunderbird holding up?
The short answer: We're doing great!
The long answer: We're currently at 54 supported locales and are closing in on the 55th (Bengali). Within the last six months, we've added 10 locales:
- Arabic
- Estonian
- Frisian
- Galician
- Indonesian
- Icelandic
- Albanian
- Tamil
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
and more are on the way. If we manage to release Thunderbird 3 in all those 55 locales, we will have increased our locale outreach by 17 locales compared to Thunderbird 2.
This is really a critical pillar of Thunderbird's growth strategy, because it will enable us to compete with other mail applications in many parts of the World, where we couldn't compete before, because people could only download the English version.
I believe this also shows that the creation of Mozilla Messaging was a smart move, that has not only invigorated the mailnews developer community, but the localization community as well.
This wouldn't be possible without the drive and passion of all the individuals who are eager to translate Thunderbird into their native language. Thanks a lot, guys! We really appreciate your efforts!
March 3, 2009
Thunderbird 3 beta2 l10n post-mortem
As the Thunderbird developers are planning a post-mortem meeting for the beta2 release tomorrow, I thought that maybe we can do the same here on the blog with an exclusive focus on l10n matters.
So I would be interested in what you thought of the release process from an l10n perspective.
So I would be interested in what you thought of the release process from an l10n perspective.
- What worked well?
- What didn't work?
- What can be improved?
- What lessons have you learned?
- What lessons do I need to learn as the l10n coordinator?
February 25, 2009
Accesskey improvements in the Thunderbird preferences window
I just pushed a fix for bug 453256 to the comm-central repository.
What this fix does, is to take advantage of the fix for bug 143065, to make sure that the accesskeys that we use in the Display, Composition, Privacy, and Advanced prefpanes are now much more sane, than they used to.
Prior to this fix accesskeys were shared across all tabs, so that if Advanced/General used "A" for "Automatically..." then Advanced/Update couldn't use A as an accesskey. That resulted in a lot of inadequate accesskey choices.
So dear localizers: If you haven't already taken advantage of the fix for bug 143065, please do so now and improve your accesskey story in the Thunderbird preferences window.
What this fix does, is to take advantage of the fix for bug 143065, to make sure that the accesskeys that we use in the Display, Composition, Privacy, and Advanced prefpanes are now much more sane, than they used to.
Prior to this fix accesskeys were shared across all tabs, so that if Advanced/General used "A" for "Automatically..." then Advanced/Update couldn't use A as an accesskey. That resulted in a lot of inadequate accesskey choices.
So dear localizers: If you haven't already taken advantage of the fix for bug 143065, please do so now and improve your accesskey story in the Thunderbird preferences window.
February 23, 2009
Thunderbird 3 Beta2 l10n update
We're in the last stages of the beta2 release cycle for Thunderbird 3, after some last minute l10n checkins. And the good news is that we have more and more locales on board. We will release beta2 in 43 languages, five more than what we achieved with beta1.
Looking back at the whole Thunderbird 3 release cycle, we see a steady increase:
Unfortunately we are missing three locales in the beta2 release that were included in the beta1 release, but hopefully we can pick those up again with our next release (beta3) or our final release.
Looking back at the whole Thunderbird 3 release cycle, we see a steady increase:
- Thunderbird 3 alpha1: 1 language
- Thunderbird 3 alpha2: 12 languages
- Thunderbird 3 alpha3: 28 languages
- Thunderbird 3 beta1: 38 languages
- Thunderbird 3 beta2: 43 languages
Unfortunately we are missing three locales in the beta2 release that were included in the beta1 release, but hopefully we can pick those up again with our next release (beta3) or our final release.
February 17, 2009
All Thunderbird strings are now frozen for the beta2 release
I just wanted to remind everyone that as of last night, Tuesday, February 17 at 23:59 PST, the firm code and string freeze went into effect. That means that all strings are now entirely frozen until we release Thunderbird 3 beta2.
As of now 28 locales have already opted-in to be part of this release. An additional 9 locales are green (meaning that they have no missing strings in their localization) on our l10n dashboard and will hopefully opt-in soon. Hopefully even more will follow so that Thunderbird 3 beta2 will be the largest release in terms of the number of localized versions ever.
If you want be part of this release, please opt-in in the corresponding opt-in thread in the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup.
One additional note to localizers:
Please take a close look at the status of your tinderbox (at http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=Mozilla-l10n-locale where "locale" must be replaced with your locale code (e.g. es-ES or de). I've seen some locales having a red Windows tinderbox, because those locales didn't follow this change to our installer strings. Please check if this applies to you and make the necessary changes before opting-in.
As of now 28 locales have already opted-in to be part of this release. An additional 9 locales are green (meaning that they have no missing strings in their localization) on our l10n dashboard and will hopefully opt-in soon. Hopefully even more will follow so that Thunderbird 3 beta2 will be the largest release in terms of the number of localized versions ever.
If you want be part of this release, please opt-in in the corresponding opt-in thread in the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup.
One additional note to localizers:
Please take a close look at the status of your tinderbox (at http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=Mozilla-l10n-locale where "locale" must be replaced with your locale code (e.g. es-ES or de). I've seen some locales having a red Windows tinderbox, because those locales didn't follow this change to our installer strings. Please check if this applies to you and make the necessary changes before opting-in.
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