Language Packs

OOo 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	H.-J Lankenau	12.07.04	Draft
Conforms to	
Applies to	All applications
Task ID(s)	#i34221#, #i34222#, #i32505#, #i34300#
Category	FEATURE

Abstract

Openoffice.org 2.0 will have the ability of adding language packs to an already installed version. This will abolish the limitation of installing a complete office suite for each language in Openoffice.org 1.x.

i-Team Members (The specification owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Falko Tesch	Falko.Tesch@sun.com
Development	Ingo Schmidt	Ingo.Schmidt@sun.com
Development	Philipp Lohmann	Philipp.Lohmann@sun.com
Development	H.-Joachim Lankenau	ause@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Olaf Felka	Olaf.Felka@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Andreas Treumann	Andreas.Treumann@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	Uwe.Fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	<Name>	<Date>
Development		
Quality Assurance	Olaf Felka	17.09.2004
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	16.09.2004
String Review		

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial release	Ause	12.07.2004
1.1	Various additions	FT	16.07.2004

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	2

5	Competitive Analyzes	2

5.1	Openoffice.org 1.x	2

5.2	MS Office 2000 and above	2

6	Detailed Specification	2

6.1	Build Environment:	2

6.2	Resource System	2

6.3	Help	2

6.4	UI	3

6.5	Installation	3

6.6	G11n	3

6.7	Error Conditions	3

6.8	Migration	3

7	Future Tasks	3

8	Notes	4

9	References	4

Glossary

Term	Description
Configuration snippet	A file containing configuration items to merge into an existing office configuration

Motivation

Introduce a convenient way of extending an existing office installation with additional UI localizations. The current installations only allow one or a limited set of languages. Since the UI localization is separated from the core libraries, adding a new localization to an existing installation can be done with little resources compared to the benefit for the user/product. Moreover introducing “Language Packs” could solve several size issues with CD/downloading.

User Scenarios

A user installed a German localized OpenOffice.org. He eventually wants to add another account for a Korean friend. For OpenOffice.org 1.x he needs to install a complete second set of Korean localized Openoffice.org 1.x and encounters various problems since both installations share the same user directories and settings.

If the user could just download an additional language pack for Korean all of the above would be no problem.

Goals

Create installable packages which add UI/Help/Extras/Configuration for one specific localization to an office installation

Allow switching between all existing localizations in UI. (This issue is specified in the Language Selection specification.)

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

A language Pack must at least contain:

A complete set of localized UI strings visible in menus or dialogs. Localized tool-tips or help are nice to have but not required.

A configuration snippet to propagate this new language to the installed office.

The ability to locate the office installation and check it's version.

Optional contents may be a localize help, additional documents or fonts. Additional functionality (e.g. spellchecker or language dependent tools) may not be part of the language pack (see “Future Tasks”).

Technical Dependencies

As the creation of language packs is be based on the regular build process, a valid OOo or SO buildenvironment is required.

Competitive Analyzes

Openoffice.org 1.x

The current installationsets are limited to a discrete amount of languages. Each new set of localizations requires a new installationset for each product. This is a waste of resources in multiple ways. Building and shipping these sets produces a huge amount of redundant data and also takes a significant amount of time.

MS Office 2000 and above

MS sells so-called “Language Packs” for their English releases of MS Office 2000 and above. These language packs include a set of 3 or more various languages that can simply be added to an existing installation of MS Office.

The only pre-condition is that the pre-installed MS Office is English.

Once the language packs are installed a new tools is added to the “MS Office Tools” folder that allows the user to switch in between the installed languages (for more details on this issue please refer to the “Competitive Analysis chapter in ” Language Selection specification.)

Detailed Specification

With “Language Packs” only a default core installationset (en-US) is required. All additional localizations form “Language Packs”, do consist of language dependent files only and can be added at will.

To implement this feature various additions and changes have to be made and specified.

Build Environment:

Define a new product type “Language Pack” for the “native installer” process (packing/installing). (IS)

Resource System

A fallback mechanism is to be implemented which is able to handle missing UI-items of additional localizations. The preferred fallback chain is:

Successively try the current locale without extensions (Variant, Country)

Fallback to “en-US”

Generated fallback in the current locale to indicate a missing resource

An empty item
Notes: A fallback to an arbitrary locale doesn't make sense here as the user might not be able to read it. A fallback to an empty item must be easily noticeable (e.g. MessageBox) if the office is started in a development environment (PL)

Help

- With issue #i32505# a fallback mechanism will be available for SO/OOo online help too.

UI

The “Tools/Options/Language Settings/Languages” dialog needs a drop down list for selecting the UI language. See Language Selection specification

Installation

The installation of a “Language Pack” has to ensure versioning. In detail this means an exact match of the “Language Pack” and the office product version. A preinstallation script has to check a version unique identifier (crashreporter may already have introduced such) an report an error before doing any modifications. (IS)

Since the office installation may override the default path contained in the installation files, the language pack installer must be able to obtain the actual location from the according database (rpm/package/registry).

A “Language Pack” installation is required to have an uninstall mechanism available. (IS)

since no java installer GUI for language packs is available, installing is done on the command line. See <link to spec missing>

String list

Item	English	German	Comments

Tab Order

-

Key Board Shortcuts

-

G11n

See “Future Tasks”

Error Conditions

-

Migration

-

Future Tasks

A GUI interface for “Language Pack” installation is needed. (CJ)

Extend language packs to support installing additional language dependent functionality (e.g. spellchecker, conversion tools or UNO components)

A specification of when and how to invalidate or disable installed language packs in case of product updates is still missing. The current idea is to disable all languages not covered by the product update.

Implement an attribute system in “scp2” to flag language pack components as required or optional and an override mechanism for “complete languages” which marks all components as required for these languages.

Notes

References

<Give references to related documentation, such as engineering designs, technical specs, and other sources for related units. Also include links to documents that other sections in this spec need to refer to, such as user opinions usability test reports.>

Language Packs

Page 4

Http://specs.openoffice.org/g11n/lang_pax/language_packs.sxw

Language Packs

Falko Tesch

2004-07-12T12:49:31

Falko Tesch