Hello, I'd like to raise some internationalization issues Ubuntu has faced and is facing currently. As a translator and user of Ubuntu in my native language I've sometimes felt that it would be useful to have better awareness of i18n issues among the developers in general. I hope this will help people to remember that when doing any new stuff, keep i18n in mind and tested.
I also hope this will help finding people to fix not just the bugs (which are usually not _that_ bad) but the wider issues I describe towards the end of this post. Maybe there'd even be some hired person(s) specifically looking at these kind of issues in the future. Contents of this post: History, Gutsy, Wider Issues == History == As some history, we've, for example, had a bug in Rosetta preventing complete translations at a release time until edgy [1], and several bugs in each released version about non-complete i18n of applications and various other aspects like installer. For example at least [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] in Feisty (Feisty is better than any release before, though!). Also Ubuntu documentation translation updates haven't yet been done for Feisty, they were supposed to be done because there was so little time to translate documentation for Feisty. Hopefully the problems [7] can be resolved quickly (there's reportedly a problem with generating the docs). [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/102382 [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/106756 [3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/103292 [4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-apt/+bug/103917 [5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez-gnome/+bug/95796 [6] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/45741 [7] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-docs/+bug/123963 == Gutsy == Currently we have some problems with gutsy, besides the fact the installer is not translatable yet at all which is being fixed. Hopefully [8] too, which is also in Feisty. The installer currently doesn't install support for any language besides English [9], plus both on the live CD and in an installed Ubuntu "Examples" folder isn't translated [10]. The new xdg-user-dirs currently also works suboptimally [11], of which there's going to be further investigation indeed before the release (thanks!), I hope that it will work in an optimal way in the release. I'm currently not seeing any actual applications that couldn't be translated at all, besides problems with Rosetta lagging behind badly and missing a feature to keep restricted manager translated at the moment [12]. I do believe they'll be solved near/after the string freeze and before release this time. For an example about a new Ubuntu program, displayconfig-gtk seems very properly translatable though currently translations have to be sent to the bzr repository until Rosetta catches up. As a whole, gutsy is looking better than feisty again, which is great, but there are big issues still left, read more below. [8] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/103925 [9] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/131294 [10] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/example-content/+bug/45489 [11] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-user-dirs/+bug/123435 [12] https://bugs.launchpad.net/rosetta/+bug/130138 == Wider Issues == I don't doubt the automatic language support downloading wouldn't be fixed to some extent soon, but most probably not optimally. That brings me to the bigger problem of the difficulty of having Ubuntu in one's native language: (0. the Win32 part of the live cd doesn't have translations) 1. When starting Ubuntu from the live CD, it starts in English unless the user (let's suppose a newbie) strikes "F2" in the boot menu 2. When the desktop shows, even if the person chose non-English language, generally support for any other language is not on the CD (more languages are needed to be dropped in each release), and besides the installer which includes all translations most stuff is in English 3. In the installer, it's not indicated that the person should _really_ have network connection enabled for the language support to be downloaded, plus even with the connection it's currently broken like stated ([[9]) 4. Before or after installation, if the user happens to find Language Selector, and has the default language as one's native language (ie. selected in the boot menu or in the installer if already installed), the selector does not suggest installing support for the Default Language selected if there was no network connection during installation [13] [13] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-selector/+bug/135752 To fix the numbered problems, besides including instructions for 1. and 3. in our ubuntu-fi.org's installation guide [14] that hopefully some Finnish people read before installing, I've done one blueprint [15] to collect ideas and other blueprints. The blueprint was briefly discussed during Sevilla, though concentrating on the issue of fitting more languages on the CD via higher compression. There's basically two sides of the problem discussed in that one spec, and the better compression (LZMA) should possibly be separated into a spec of its own. a) Above else, in my spec I continued on the idea presented in another spec [16] that we really should eliminate 1., 2. and 3. by having a proper "Welcome" / "Select Language" dialog when the graphical desktop first starts, before installation. It should detect if a network connection / repositories is not available, guide the person to enable network and make sure the whole support for the selected language is downloaded, after which an automatic log out / log in is done to have all the translations in use. b) In order to make some more stuff to fit on the CD, there's the aspect of more tight compression discussed in my spec and in Sevilla [14], though I don't know much about that myself. In other related specs, we should really have a DVD image available with complete language support without any network connection needed [17], and maybe the documentation translations could be separated into language packs too [18] again to help the smaller CD images. [14] http://wiki.ubuntu-fi.org/Wiki/Asentaminen [15] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/better-desktop-cd-language-support [16] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/better-livecd-language-selector [17] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/larger-livefs [18] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/language-packs-for-documentation An educated guess that I haven't done much regarding the wider issues themselves besides collecting information would be correct. Currently I don't have resources to propose code on the language selector myself and avoid burning out in open source ([19] is a good read for many of us!) at the same time. I just hope that this subject would raise interest in some people to fix some or all of the issues at some point. [19] http://www.progbox.co.uk/wordpress/?p=268 In the end, I'd just like to thank everyone for creating the best localized and internationalized free software distribution there is. There are problems as indicated, but I hope the goal is to reach even higher. -Timo
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