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Re: Internationalizing app metadata

 

Hi David,

First of all, thanks for bringing this up, you're definitely right in
saying that this is key :)  A few questions:

1) Do we have a plan for the legacy deb-packaged apps we have on the image
(or do we just plan to get those as clicks ASAP?)
2) Would inline translations have any effect on the image size compared to
having the translations in a .mo? (More specifically for the description
bits as the question re: Names was already answered in the other thread)
3) Would this method use Launchpad's translations service, or would it need
to be separate?
4) Do we anticipate saving all apps' metadata translations on disk, or just
those that are pre-installed?

Thanks
Chris


On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:40 PM, David Planella
<david.planella@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Continuing with the topic of internationalization, the next highly visible
> UI element is app metadata. On the phone, you'll see this displayed in
> different places:
>
> - Click scope: on the list of apps
> - Click scopes: on a single app dash page
> - Launcher: when long-pressing a Launcher icon
>
> Traditionally, this data has come from .desktop files on the desktop, but
> with click packages and the Software Store some things are changing.
>
> The situation right now is that translations come from the Store, where
> there is support for editing them via a form. It should also be soon
> possible for clients (e.g. the click scope) to fetch those translations
> when online.
>
> However, this leaves open the offline case: if translations for the
> preinstalled apps are only available when online, the first user experience
> before getting connected will be a mixture of English and native language
> context, which is not very optimal.
>
> I've had a talk with dobey as developer of the click scope, and we've
> clarified some points, but we'd welcome some more input from experts in the
> other parts of the platform i18n support touches:
>
> 1) Where: options to implement offline translations include adding
> internationalization support to either .desktop or click manifest files,
> and from a talk with dobey, it seems the manifest files would be a good
> candidate. When online, translations could be downloaded and refreshed if
> necessary.
>
> 2) Mapping: there are several different places where app metadata is
> defined, and we'd need to make sure they are aligned. I've created a table
> with those places and their mappings as of today. For the sake of
> completion I've also included scopes metadata, as they are going to be
> shipped as click packages in the future too:
>
>     https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/AppMetadataTranslations
>
> Please click, scopes and store folks let me know if these are correct.
>
> 3) Inline translations or MO files: for performance reasons, the
> suggestion is to include the translations inline in in the manifest or
> desktop files, as they could be read while listing all available apps
> without having to additionally open each app's .mo file. Thoughts on this?
>
> Any feedback on this will be really appreciated, as having excellent
> native language support will be key for Ubuntu phones to be everywhere :)
>
> Cheers,
> David.
>
> [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/software-center-agent/+bug/1302045
>
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