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Gaia string freeze

2012-11-23T23:59:00+01:00

Good news, everyone! Gaia is now string-frozen. This means no more string changes nor additions. From now on, all bugs with l10n impact should have the late-l10n keyword and a review request on :stas.

The purpose of the string freeze is to stabilize the UI and give localizers time to work on and test the translations. Small changes to the English copy like typo fixes, grammar and (sometimes) style are usually fine to make even after a string freeze, but bigger ones will need to be reviewed for impact on localizations. Usually, it’s a matter of fixing en-US and breaking all other locales at the same time. Obviously, that’s something we’d like to avoid.

What’s new?

Both bucket 1 apps and bucket 2 apps are now string-frozen. We followed the style guidelines written by Josh and Matej and fixed many typos and inconsistencies in the UI. Most of these changes were English-only and the identifiers didn’t change.

You can see the diff in Mercurial or a summary of changes by Scoobidiver.

I finally added the possibility to localize manifest files. In each app’s folder you will find a manifest.properties file (see all). The strings there are responsible for the name of apps displayed on the homescreen and in the card view.

Lastly, some bucket 1 string-freeze breaking changes were hard to avoid. The affected apps are: browser, camera, clock, comms/contacts, comms/dialer, gallery, sms, video.

Here are the total stats as of today:

1828 strings, or
6091 words.

If your locale was green or almost green before this update, you’ll likely be at around 55-60% today.

Follow the instructions on the L10n:B2G wikipage to get started. The English files are in https://hg.mozilla.org/gaia-l10n/en-US/.

When are the translations due?

The deadline is December 17^th.

What’s next?

We’re making a lot of progress on producing nightly device and desktop builds. See the tracking bug 766962 and its dependencies, and also read the Testing section below.

There are still a few remaining late-l10n bugs, mostly related to legal, that didn’t make the string freeze and that we will want to fix in the near future (and thus, we will need to break the string freeze for them).

Bug 814814: Don’t hardcode “Firefox” nor “Firefox OS”
Bug 811677: Turn “Licensing” item into “Legal Information”
Bug 802908: Change Settings > Help & Feedback feedback links

(You may also want to follow the l12y bugs which don’t have direct impact on translations, but are important to Gaia’s localizability.)

The roadmap

The roadmap for the next 1 or 2 weeks is as follows:

localized desktop builds,
a few more late additions listed above,
more locales added to the build: bn-IN, gu, km, ne-NP, si, th, vi.

In the next few months we will be also focusing on localization of support articles, the marketplace and payment workflows, in-product pages and the dev hub at the marketplace.

Testing with the desktop builds

I know some of the localizers use the default desktop builds (with 4 locales enabled) and then follow the instructions on the wiki (DEBUG=1 make etc.) to test your localizations. If you’re one of them, then I have some news for you.

The good & the very good

The annoying bug which hindered testing on Linux has been fixed and has now landed on central, aurora and beta! This means that there should be no more need of my custom b2g builds.

Even better news: we’re making excellent progress on producing official localized builds. If you’re interested, follow these two bugs:

Bug 812836: Set up nightly multilocale B2G desktop builds for l10n testing
Bug 812829: Create Gaia build config to create multilocale profiles

It looks like we might be able to get those builds going next week!

The bad

The perf is better, and we’re about to start doing localized nightlies? What’s not to like?

Unfortunately, there’s currently a bug which breaks profiles made with DEBUG=1. I’m not 100% what’s the root cause, but I’m suspecting bug 802976 and bug 813900.

The workaround

If you run into the black screen bug mentioned above, you could try doing your l10n testing in Firefox, instead of a b2g desktop build.

Follow all the testing instructions on the wiki like you’d normally would. However, instead of running the b2g-bin binary with -profile, run Firefox. For instance:

/usr/bin/firefox -profile gaia/profile

A browser window will open and it will be black. This is a known issue. Just open a new tab and go to about:config. Look for intl.accept_languages and prepend your locale code to its value. So if you’re Polish, you’d do:

intl.accept_languages           pl, en-US, en

Then, browse to any app, for example:

http://browser.gaiamobile.org:8080/

And voilá! Use the Responsive Design Mode (Tools → Web Developer) to adjust the size of the viewport. You can even use the Inspector and try out different translations on the fly!

This is what running Gaia in Firefox might look like:

Discussion

Come to the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup if you have questions!

Bucket 1 Gaia apps are now string-frozen

2012-09-28T19:47:00+02:00

Good news, everyone! The first string freeze for Gaia is now in effect.

Thanks for waiting patiently as we polished the final wording. Read on to find all the answers you might have about how to jump straight into the work.

Which apps are string-frozen?

This is the first string freeze (there will be a second one in October) and the list of apps that you can start working on (the “bucket 1”) is as follows:

Apps
- Browser
- Camera
- Clock
- Communications/Contacts
- Communications/Dialer
- FM Radio
- Gallery
- Music
- SMS
- Video
System - Keyboard

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:B2G for details.

How many strings are there?

It’s 366 strings, with a total of 868 words. Not so many :)

How much time do we have?

You have until October 26th to complete this batch.

Where are the files?

The files live in Mercurial in the special gaia-l10n hierarchy. One unusual change from the regular Firefox workflow is that the en-US files can also be found in gaia-l10n. Remember to clone via SSH, for instance:

hg clone ssh://hg.mozilla.org/gaia-l10n/pl

You can use compare-dirs (pip install compare-locales will get you compare-dirs, too) to see the stats.

Some locales will see some strings localized, taken from the git repository. If you’re one of those locales, please review all the existing translations carefully.

This is important! If you worked on Gaia l10n before the string freeze, please make sure your translations are up-to-date. English strings may have changed!

What about the dashboard?

You can see the compare-locales output on your locale’s team dashboard (the example I linked to is for Polish). (We’ll make it look nicer.)

If you can’t see Gaia in there, sign up on the community-gaia-list etherpad and we will hook your locale up.

Sign off when you’re done and have tested your work.

How to test my localization?

Use a desktop build! See the quick & dirty instructions to get started. If they don’t work for you, email me or talk to me on IRC. With your help, I can make this HOWTO much more robust and accurate.

You might also want to check out my two blog posts: Running Boot to Gecko on your desktop and How to test localizability of Gaia system apps.

Going beyond Bucket 1

What else is in store? There will be a second string freeze, expect updates on the schedule. And we’ll also soon start the localization of the Gecko part of Firefox OS, taken from mozilla-aurora. Think netError.dtd, global.dtd, intl.properties etc. Most of that already exists in mobile/ so I don’t think there will be a lot of work there.

I’ll also post about the nightly builds once we start makig them.

Questions?

Impossible, I thought I covered everything! :)

Please do ask questions in the mozilla.dev.l10n thread or on IRC. This process is an interesting mix of old and new. There might be hiccups along the way, but my goal is to make it as smooth as possible. I’ll appreciate your feedback and ideas!

Documenting L20n.js

2012-09-25T00:23:00+02:00

The JavaScript implementation of L20n is composed of 4 main components:

context (stas), which handles resource loading, locale fallback and provides an easy pulic API for getting translated strings by identifiers,
parser (gandalf), which parses the resources downloaded by the context into an AST,
compiler (stas), which takes the AST and makes it into JavaScript objects which the context can call to get translated strings,
and finally, HTML bindings (gandalf), which extend HTMLDocument with a default L20n context capable of automatically loading resources specified via link elements.

At this point, we’re almost feature frozen for all of these four components. We’re fixing bugs and making sure the public API is consistent and understandable.

Last two weeks saw us working hard on the context part. We finished a major code refactoring and introduced a robust locale fallback, which I’ll blog about in a future post.

Testing with Mocha

Another important improvement introduced recently was the addition of a full-featured testing framework, Mocha. We’ve written over 200 test cases for the compiler and currently we’re creating more tests for other components. As an nice bonus, Mocha also gives us beautiful test coverage reports.

Mocha is based on node.js, so we had to make a few small modifications to the codebase in order to support it. For example, we make use of node-XMLHttpRequest to mimic the XHR interface available in the browser.

Project page on GitHub

We created a GitHub page to serve as the entry point for all of the docs that we’re writing. Check it out at l20n.github.com/l20n.js.

We use excellent Docco to generate documentation from the comments in the code. See the compiler docs for an example.

September 21 - First string freeze for Gaia

2012-09-20T15:55:00+02:00

As work on Gaia move forward, we are now getting ready to start the localization efforts. There will be two string freezes for Gaia, with two buckets of apps, each freezing at a different time.

The first string freeze is coming this Friday, September 21st.

We were able to stabilize 14 apps out of 20 that constitute Gaia. Some of the bigger apps, like Email, Calendar, Settings and System are not ready yet in terms of features and UI at this point, but we decided to seize the opportunity to start the localization early with apps that are stable and finished.

The first bucket of apps

The apps string-freezing this Friday, or the first bucket apps as we have dubbed them, represent around half of all the strings that will eventually be part of Gaia. In terms of numbers, we’re talking less than 400 strings freezing this Friday, and the remaining ~400 freezing sometime at the beginning of October.

You will have until October 26th to complete and test your translations. That’s 5 full weeks!

Increasing the participation

By opening up the localization effort to everyone, we’re creating a place for you to play. We want you to test localizability, come up with new vocabulary, grow the community and evangelize third-party webapp developers. Show the world that you’re interested!

That said, the first devices will be shipped in Latin America, and there is no guarantee that we will be able to ship your locale on the actual device anytime soon. This is important to understand and we want to set the expectations very clearly. (And yes, we have learned from the Fennec experience, thanks for asking :) )

What it’s going to look like

Thanks to the collaboration between the Gaia team (especially Kazé and Vivien), as well as the Releng team (John and Hal), we will be able to use our regular workflows and tools. The localization files (.properties) will be stored in Mercurial, in http://hg.mozilla.org/gaia-l10n/. Note that not all repositories have been created at this point, see bug 768373 and bug 792593 for details.

The localization dashboard will show compare-locales statistics for your locale, too.

Some of the string will need to be localized in Gecko, i.e. in mozilla-central or mozilla-aurora (think netError messages). Expect more updates about this soon.

We will be also working on getting localized builds out the door.

Stay tuned

I will post more details on Saturday, with the exact list of apps that are string-frozen, specific cloning instructions and a testing guide. For now, just stay tuned! It’s an exciting moment for Mozilla’s l10n community!

As always, feel free to post in mozilla.dev.l10n if you have questions, or ping us on IRC.

How to test localizability of Gaia system apps

2012-08-06T14:07:00+02:00

Gaia is a collection of HTML5 apps running ontop of Gecko. These apps are akin to regular websites you visit on the Web every day and they’re made using the same technologies: HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

And just like other webapps, Gaia can be run in Firefox and tested using Firefox’s developer tools!

This is a gamechanger for localization. You can preview the structure of any Gaia app in the Inspector. You can adjust the size of the viewport with the Responsive Design View. You can live-edit the underlying HTML code using Firebug. And if you change some code or edit a localization file, just reload to see your changes right away.

I recorded a 15-minute-long screencast to show how easy it can be to work on Gaia localization. Using the aproaches that I show in the screencast, you can:

try out different ideas for translations and see them in context,
test sizing and make sure all the elements fit in the UI,
verify the consistency of the verbiage used in the UI,
compare the interface with the wireframes.

Note: As of August 2012, you’ll need Firefox Nightly or Aurora to make the most of Gaia webapps. Beta and Release don’t support all the APIs yet. (What are the release channels?)

Watch the screencast

Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos, but don't worry, you can download it and watch it with your favorite video player!

Fun fact: while recording the part about looking for potential localizability issues (around the 9:00 mark), I stumbled upon a real localizability bug. I submitted a pull request with a fix, which has since been merged into Gaia’s main codebase.

Script

Here are the notes that you can see me use in the screencast.

How to test the desktop builds

Instructions: http://informationisart.com/11
DEBUG=1 make profile
b2g -profile gaia/profile
Home key is the main hardware button
Edit a file in Gaia’s code and restart to see changes

e.g., apps/browser/locales/browser.en-US.properties

How to test Gaia in the browser

Can we do away with restarts?
Run Gaia in your Firefox
firefox -profile gaia/profile
Responsive Design View is your friend

Tools > Web Developer > Responsive Design View

Ctrl+Shift+M
Homescreen doesn’t work for now
But, you can try entering other apps’ URLs:

http://browser.gaiamobile.org:8080

http://calendar.gaiamobile.org:8080

http://email.gaiamobile.org:8080

http://dialer.gaiamobile.org:8080

http://clock.gaiamobile.org:8080
Edit a file and reload to see your changes!

e.g., apps/browser/locales/browser.en-US.properties

How to use the devtools and Firebug with Gaia

No restarts, no reloads; edit the DOM live
Use the Inspector and the 3D View to understand the structure
Use Firebug to edit the DOM live and try different translations

Discussion

Don’t hesitate to ping me (stas on irc.mozilla.org) in #l10n, #gaia or #b2g. For localization-related questions, I encourage you to ask in the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup.