Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Le Mans, France
Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 5:59 am Post subject:
I think what would be great is an installer like for Mac OS X.
It select by default English and the language of your system, and after you can check the boxes of the languages you want to add, so you can add nothing and have only one language 3, 5 or all, following the needs of each users.
I don't know, but like this everybody can personalize its installation.
But adding a selection button doesn't address the problem that I have: how to get all of the files associated with your desired language downloaded with the installer.
The Mac OS X installer has dozens of languages in its installer because the installer is only distributed on a CD which allows 640 MB of data. Since Neo/J is distributed primarily through downloads, there is lots of pressure to keep the installer size from growing. Merely moving from the OOo 1.0.3 to the OOo 1.1.2 codebase added nearly 15 MB to the Neo/J download size after I chopped out Arabic, Hebrew, Estonian, etc.
Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Le Mans, France
Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2004 3:18 pm Post subject:
Anyway, I think Arabic can be included as an important language since there are a lot of people who speak it in the world compared to languages like Estonian, Cesch or Hungarian for exemple.
But you can't put your software on OpenOffice mirros in the Contrib section ?
No, OOo management will not allow us to put Neo/J binaries on their mirror network.
Maybe when I get close to releasing Neo/J 1.1 Beta, I can talk to the Neo/J mirrors about build two binaries and putting one on half the mirrors and the other on the other half. One binary would have Western European languages only and the other would have Eastern European, Asian, and Middle Eastern languages.
No, OOo management will not allow us to put Neo/J binaries on their mirror network.
So Louis backed off on his earlier proposal? Really a sad thing..
Is there any way of creating language packs? Configure it to use the language that the OSX interface uses if possible and English if not. Then have various identical packages (other than the content) with the different UI language, dictionary, thesaurus, help files and such. Make it a droplet where you throw NeoOffice/J on it and it cycles through and adds the language at hand. For all I care it can be an OpenOffice Macro, like the one that adds dictionaries.
Of course, it will take programming, but it might be possible to automate a lot of building tasks if the content files are all in the same format and source tree and such.
That would save bandwith and people could just take NeoOffice/J and their language pack and be up and running.
Or am I making this sound way more easy than it is?
That would save bandwith and people could just take NeoOffice/J and their language pack and be up and running.
Or am I making this sound way more easy than it is?
I can create language packs (they would just be a slight variation of the patch installer), but the here's the problem: where do we put them? By my calculations, the compressed localization and help files are about 20 - 25 MB per language. So 20 languages plus the 80 MB base binaries works out to be about 480 - 580 MB of server disk space for one release. Also, at a minimum, we need double that amount so that we have room to stage a new release.
In other words, disk space is the problem and that's a money issue, not a code issue.
I can create language packs (they would just be a slight variation of the patch installer), but the here's the problem: where do we put them? By my calculations, the compressed localization and help files are about 20 - 25 MB per language. So 20 languages plus the 80 MB base binaries works out to be about 480 - 580 MB of server disk space for one release. Also, at a minimum, we need double that amount so that we have room to stage a new release.
Right. Would the language packs be usable with OOo X11? If they are, and I am wondering why they wouldn't be (UI is the only aspect I can think of), would it possible to have the language packs on the OO.org mirrors?
It would be like a contributed service to Mac OOo X11 users, but usuable for NeoOffice/J users. Would they go for that? Because then you will be left with only the 80MB binary releases and a nice simple link to the page with language packs..
In the interim (until we find servers with GB of storage and TB of bandwidth), could we only upload language packs that have garnered user interest? I.e., the ones NeoJ currently ships with (which/how many are these?) plus those that have been requested on Trinity (Arabic, Hebrew--any others?)?
And/or could interested language communities be asked to host the language packs? (I certainly have space on my iDisk where I could host a couple of langpacks, though not the bandwidth unless they were less-requested localizations. I'd be happy to host, say, Arabic and Hebrew langpacks in a scenario like this.) [Edit: I think that's what M-Rick is saying above, posting while I was writing this ]
There's not a really good way to deal with localization issues, especially with a large app such as NeoJ. You make the app huge for everyone or you require multiple downloads or you leave out languages. They all pretty much inconvenience someone
Oscar's idea is a good one ("sneak" them on the OOo mirrors by making them useful for localizing Mac OOo X11), but I imagine
1) all the help, interface, etc., strings that say "OOo" would instead say "NeoJ" and
2) the path and directory structure is different enough that it would cause real problems for the installer....
Still trying to come up with a great solution....
Smokey
Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Le Mans, France
Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2004 5:24 am Post subject:
Listen to me, I maybe have a solution for everybody.
Actually, I have a web site at niwaconcept.com, test the speed and tell me what you think.
There is 100 Mb for my account ok, but Ican update to 1 Gb for free, following these conditions :
The site must existe before september 2004. yes.
90 Mb (90%) must be used 30 days before requesting to enlarge the capacity. No.
So if you are interested, we can already begin to full it at 90 % at least and wait for 30 days to have try, what do you think ?
Listen to me, I maybe have a solution for everybody.
Actually, I have a web site at niwaconcept.com, test the speed and tell me what you think.
I don't care that much about speed, but I am wondering about the amount of downloads your site can have. Aggregated bandwith is sometimes a limited factor and if you have a thousand NeoOffice/J users that all download one or two language packs, you are into 20*1000*1.5=30 GB. As NeoOffice becomes better and downloads increase, you could be running into a lot bandwith problems.
As for the problems with my 'trojan horse' solution:
1) Maybe a within NeoOffice/J 'import' script could replace the OpenOffice after the packs are first installed? Ugly hack, yes, but possible. Another option is to keep the UI language options and put only help and dictionaries in the language packs.
2) Is the directory structure really that different? I recall that Patrick tries to keep it as close to OOo as he can. But maybe I am widely off the map here.
Since both disk space and bandwidth are limiting factors for many of us, I will contact the existing Neo/J and see what limitations they would have available. Also, I looked at planamesa.org (my download site in France) and for an addtional 200 Euros per year, I could up my disk space to 1 GB! So, if a donation comes through I could use it to fund that.
As for being compatible with OOo X11, that's a nice thought but it won't happen. The language pack will be just like a patch installer and it will have Neo/J and the GPL license on it and it will have to look for Neo/J path names. In addition, if Neo/J is shipping help files, one of my wish lists is to replace all of those hard coded "Ctrl" and "Control" strings with "Command" so Neo/J help may be inconsistent with OOo X11. Lastly, I really don't have any desire to support the OOo X11 release. After all, the original reason I started Neo/J was to get away from the maintenance headaches that OOo X11 has and probably always will have.
Bad news. I looked at the OOo localized help file download site (http://ftp.stardiv.de/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/helpcontent/) and there are neither Arabic nor Hebrew help files. In fact, of the 18 OOo localizations that I excluded from Neo/J 1.1 Alpha 2, only Turkish has help files available.
So, instead of making a few dozen separate language packs, I am thinking of just making a single language pack for these 18 excluded languages and continuing to use the existing help file download instructions for Neo/J 1.1 Beta.
This would not take me too much extra release time and, if I don't include localized help files like previous Neo/J releases, less than 100 MB extra disk space required for these extra localizations will be required.
Patrick
Last edited by pluby on Sun Nov 14, 2004 6:14 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: May 31, 2003 Posts: 219 Location: French Alps
Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2004 6:07 pm Post subject:
pluby wrote:
Also, I looked at planamesa.org (my download site in France) and for an addtional 200 Euros per year, I could up my disk space to 1 GB! So, if a donation comes through I could use it to fund that.
I use Mellel to type Uyghur, which is modified Arabic script. Mellel handles it as well as Arabic flawlessly. I'm able to use Windows and Apple fonts with no problem, as long as they are Unicode.
I was hoping that OOj would handle Arabic, but I have the same problem as mentioned previously with letters not connecting. While Mellel is a nice little multi-lingual word processor designed for Mac, I would much rather use the more full featured OO.
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