There has been a lot of controversy where to put the language selection
in Mozilla. It was suggested that when you create a new profile you have
the option to select the language and region you want. The problem I see
is that only the en-US language-region pack is available unless you
start Mozilla with the default profile, and take your time to download
the langpack you're interested in. Then you can create a profile, and
select that language, although that it's not necessary because you can
restart Mozilla and set your new language.
My point is that the language selection option when you create a new
profile, is useless unless something is done to implement it. I would
suggest to create a pop-up window that retrieves all the available
langpacks for the version you are using (you don't need to go to a web
page as the l10n, and see all the contributors,...) (that window shoul
be as the one in preferences, languages to display webpages, but the
content should be retrieved from a webpage, as it's done with the tabs
in My Sidebar), only the English and original name of the language you
could install (most of the people know the English name of their
language). Then, you select the one you want to install, and the
langpack is downloaded and installed. It prompts you to restart mozilla,
so the next time you open you profile, should be in your favourite
language.
Without that, the profile option is useless. You don't want either to
ship different langpacks with Mozilla, because size does matter. Once
the UI is freezed, I think most of the langpacks will work with a newer
version of Mozilla, even if the langpack doesn't correspond to the
latest milestone, should be compatible. Another thing interesting would
be an option to unistall a langpack under preferences.
Xose S Puente
l10n contributor
