Shaun McDonald wrote:
Hello,
At the moment there are a number of issues with the current language
packs for OpenOffice.org. Some platforms such as Mac OS X don't have
language packs, instead they only have full installsets. The language
packs currently have to be built on each platform individually. This
means extra compilation time and extra storage on the mirror network
since essentially the same localisation data is packaged into a
different package for every platform.
I have a proposal for dramatically improving the current situation.
Let's have cross-platform language packs. This will mean that the
language packs will be built once, and can then be used on ANY platform.
This will save build time, especially when a builder can just use their
fastest machine, instead of having to do it once per platform. This will
free up developer and builder time, as well as space on the mirror network.
With this change I'm looking at implementing a simple user installation
of language packs, similar to what has just been added to OpenOffice.org
2.2 for extensions. This would enable platform integration for the
language pack installation. We could possibly go as far as Firefox and
deploy language packs in a very similar way to extensions. We could even
have the option to install language packs just for one user or for all
users of the installation. If the platform supports it, a server
deployed location for the language packs should be possible.
This is just an idea, it needs more development before implementation.
No implementation testing has been done yet. An initial idea check for
daftness has been completed, which is why this mail is going out. I'm
looking to see if there are any foreseeable problems with this proposal,
and whether there is backing from the whole OpenOffice.org community.
Shaun
P.S.
I'm not subscribed to all the lists that Pavel Janik suggested to send
this idea to.
I am thinking in similar directions lately
(<http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/bits2boxes>,
<http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ODF_Toolkit/Efforts/Packaging_Modularization>).
However, both native, per-platform installation formats and the
platform-independent OOo extension format have their relative merits
compared with one another. Anyway, I would be happy if we could get
ahead in this area.
We should probably converge on a single mailing list for further
discussions (I personally only read two of them, [EMAIL PROTECTED] and
[EMAIL PROTECTED], of which the latter did not receive the OP?), how
about [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Stephan
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