Language Selection

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Falko Tesch	7/20/04	Final
Conforms to	
Applies to	all applications
Task ID(s)	i21191,i8452
Category	Feature

Abstract

In multi-lingual installation sets of OpenOffice.org (up to release 1.1.x), the user was faced with a language selection dialog during the workstation setup step to select his/her preferred UI language. This selection could not be changed later on without a full uninstall/re-install cycle.

With the removal of the workstation installation step, the natural choice is to pick up the desktop's preferences for the user.

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

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Falko Tesch (FT) Christian Jansen (CJ)	ft@openoffice.org cj@openoffice.org
Development	Oliver Braun (OBR) Lars Oppermann (LO) Eike Rathke (ER)	obr@openoffice.org lo@openoffice.org er@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Olaf Felka (OF) Michael Cziebalski (MCI) Ulf Stroehler (US)	of@openoffice.org mci@openoffice.org us@openoffice.org
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	ufi@openoffice.org

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Falko Tesch	28.07.2004
Development	Oliver Braun	02.08.04
Quality Assurance	Olaf Felka	02.08.2004
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	02.08.2004
String Review	Falko Tesch	28.07.2004

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	First draft	obr	21.07.04
1.1	Added matrix, scenarios etc.	FT	28.07.2004
1.2	Added milestone section	OBR	30.07.04
1.3	Change "Same as System" back to "Default"	FT	02.08.2004
1.4	Added approvals	OBR	02.08.2004
2.0	Addendum written based on input from IssueZilla issue 34654	FT	05.10.2004
2.1	Added QS issue and changed one string	FT	20.01.2005
2.2	Added UI relevant issues (based on issue 41707)	FT	23.02.2005

Contents

Glossary	1

2	Motivation	1

3	User Scenarios	1

3.1	First office launch of a multi-lingual installation	1

3.2	Diverging UI and content locale	1

4	Goals	1

5	Requirements and Dependencies	1

5.1	Requirements	1

5.2	Technical Dependencies	1

6	Competitive Analyses	2

6.1	Unix	2

6.2	Windows 2000/XP Pro	2

6.3	MS Office 2000/XP/2203 w/ Multi Language Pack	2

7	Detailed Specification	3

7.1	New Setting: UI Language	3

QuickStarter Issue	5

7.2	Dependencies on OS locale settings	5

Matrix for Western language UI of OS	7

Matrix for CJK language UI of OS	8

Matrix for CTL language UI of OS	8

7.3	G11n	9

7.4	Error Conditions	9

7.5	Migration	9

8	Future Tasks	9

7.1	Additional Lang Selection UI	9

7.2	Full Localised Language List	9

9	Milestones	10

9.1	CWS syssettings01	10

9.2	CWS ??	10

10	Notes	10

11	References	10

Glossary

Term	Description
UI	User Interface
OS	Operating System
IME	Input Method Engine/Editor, a tool to input complex scripts with simple PC keyboards
CWS	Child Workspace, a method to define and handle self contained steps of development

Motivation

This feature (picking up the desktop's locale) has been requested by the UNIX community for a long time. It also seems to be the most natural solution given that there is no more workstation uninstall.

User Scenarios

First office launch of a multi-lingual installation

The user is faced with a language selection dialog, even though he made this kind of choice at login time (UNIX) or in his/her System Settings (Windows) already.

Diverging UI and content locale

Some users prefer an English as UI language, but want other localization settings like time format and measurement units to be the same as in their native language.

Goals

This feature will allow OpenOffice.org 2.0 to automatically adjust its UI language according to the chosen locale UI of the host operating system.

Also fallback scenarios are installed in case the OS language is not available within OpenOffice.org 2.0 ones.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

This feature requires a multi-lingual installation of OpenOffice.org 2.0.

Technical Dependencies

The implementation requires platform configuration backend support [1].

Competitive Analyses

Unix

Under most Unix system the UI language is determined at login. This way all users can have their own locale settings for their work environment.

Unix programs normally do support these parameters and provide (if available) the concurrent UI language.

For console programs changing the locale works on the fly, for X session a restart of the session is needed. The same applies for all applications.

Windows 2000/XP Pro

Microsoft sells an additional “Language Pack” for various UI languages to enhance English Windows 2000/XP Pro installation to be multi-lingual.

This support is user dependent. So every user can chose his own UI language.

In any case a re-login is necessary to change the UI for a user.

MS Office 2000/XP/2203 w/ Multi Language Pack

Microsoft Office Language Pack Extension allows the user to add multiple UI and help languages to an already installed English MS Office 2000/XP/2003 (Note: This works only with an English version of Office!).

Such pack adds completely localised UI language and help as well as it adds all necessary proofing tools and in some cases enhances even the OS IMEs.

It adds a language selection tab page (see screenshot below) where the user can select the language for MS Office and UI and help (separately). It offers all available/installed languages as well as “(same as system)” default.

The latter will allow MS Office always to start in the UI language the underlying OS will use (Note: Due to the lack of an multi-language Windows it cannot be tested what happens if MS Windows uses a UI language that MS Office does not support).

Figure 1 MS Office UI language selection tab page

MS Office must be restarted after changing the language to bring the new language in effect.

Detailed Specification

New Setting: UI Language

OpenOffice.org 2.0 will offer a new multi-language pack installation with the following language support in it:

tbd

StarOffice 8 will offer a new multi-language pack installation with the following language support in it:

English (US)

German

French

Spanish

Portuguese (Brazilian)

Swedish

Italian

StarSuite 8 will offer a new multi-language pack installation with the following language support in it:.

Chinese (simplified)

Chinese (traditional)

Japanese

Korean

English (US)

When installed all language packs are automatically installed.

On first start of OpenOffice.org 2.0/StarOffice 8/StarSuite 8 it will detect the UI and locale setting of the underlying OS and will try to use the UI locale for its own locale.

In case this locale is not available OpenOffice.org 2.0/StarOffice 8/StarSuite 8 will always default to English (US).

The user always has the option to change the UI language at “Tools – Options – Language Settings – Languages” (see Figure 2 on page 4)

The default setting is “(same as system)”

Decision making for UI language when office is starting up:

Dialog:

Figure 2 UI Language selection dialogue

Once a new language is chosen a message box (see Figure 3 on page 5) pops up, telling the user that office needs to be restarted to change to the new setting.

Figure 3 Message box, when change of UI language is initialised

String list for Figure 3

Item	English	German	Comments
Caption	%PRODUCTNAME %PRODUCTVERSION	%PRODUCTNAME %PRODUCTVERSION	
Text	The language setting of the user interface has been updated and will take effect the next time you start %PRODUCTNAME %PRODUCTVERSION.	Die Spracheinstellung der Benutzeroberfläche wurde geändert und wird beim nächsten Start von %PRODUCTNAME %PRODUCTVERSION wirksam.	
Button	OK	OK	

Under Unix the UI language is read-out from the OS set LC_MESSAGES variable.

Under Windows the UI language is read-out from the current used UI of the OS.

QuickStarter Issue

In case the QuickStarter (QS) is running the dialogue will trigger an event that will tell the QS to temporarily disable its functionality to keep the office in memory.

This will allow the QS to be closed and re-started once the last open OpenOffice.org 2.0 window is closed. This way the user has not to care about re-starting the QS with the office.

UI Issues

Some parts of the UI (namely icons or symbols, like B for bold, I for Italic or U for underlined) are locale-specific. These icons/symbols must be changed according to the chosen locale and used on the next office start.

Dependencies on OS locale settings

While 6.1 only relates to the UI language setting this issue will deal with the read-out of the OS locale setting.

Under Unix this is LC_CTYPE.

Under Windows this are the standard locale formats of the locale from “Regional Options” tab page from the “Control Panel's” “Language” setting.

The following matrices/tables define what settings are activated within the Language Settings (see also Figure 4 on page 6).

Equals to “Document locale (Western) in matrix Equals to “Document locale (CJK)” in matrix Equals to “Document locale (CTL)” in matrix Equals to “Locale settings” in matrix Equals to “UI” in matrix Attention: This section has been re-designed! Figure 4 Language Setting dialogue

String List for Figure 4

Item	English	German	Comments
Drop Down List Box caption	~User interface	Benutzeroberfläche	
Drop Down List Box entry	[same as system]	[wie System]	
Section name	Enhanced language support	Erweiterte Sprachunterstützung	
Checkbox caption	E~nabled for Asian languages	Unterstützung von asiatischen Sprachen aktiviert	
Checkbox caption	Ena~bled for complex text layout (CTL)	Unterstützung von 'Complex Text Layout' (CTL) aktiviert	

Matrix for Western language UI of OS

OS	OpenOffice.org
UI	System Setting	UI	Document locale (Western)	Document locale (CJK)	Document locale (CTL)	Locale settings
A Western language	A Western language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	Same as OO.o UI	[none]	[none]	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A Western language	A CJK language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	Same as OO.o UI	Same as OS System Setting (fallback: [none])	[none]	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A Western language	A CTL language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	Same as OO.o UI	[none]	Same as OS System Setting (fallback: [none])	Same as OS System Setting [default]

Matrix for CJK language UI of OS

OS	OpenOffice.org
UI	System Setting	UI	Document locale (Western)	Document locale (CJK)	Document locale (CTL)	Locale settings
A CJK language	A CJK language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	English US	Same as OO.o UI	[none]	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A CJK language	A Western language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	Same as OS System Setting (fallback: English US)	Same as OO.o UI	[none]	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A CJK language	A CTL language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	English US	Same as OO.o UI	Same as OS System Setting (fallback: [none])	Same as OS System Setting [default]

Matrix for CTL language UI of OS

OS	OpenOffice.org
UI	System Setting	UI	Document locale (Western)	Document locale (CJK)	Document locale (CTL)	Locale settings
A CTL language	A CTL language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	English US	[none]	Same as OO.o UI	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A CTL language	A Western language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	Same as OS System Setting (fallback: English US)	[none]	Same as OO.o UI	Same as OS System Setting [default]
A CTL language	A CJK language	Same as OS UI (fallback: English US)	English US	Same as OS System Setting (fallback [none])	Same as OO.o UI	Same as OS System Setting [default]

Tab Order

n/a

Key Board Shortcuts

n/a

G11n

Well, that's what this spec is all about, right?

Error Conditions

If the desktop is running in a locale for which the office does not have the appropriate language files installed, OpenOffice.org 2.0 will fall back to en-US.

Migration

Does not apply.

Future Tasks

Additional Lang Selection UI

This section was added on request of Colm Smyth (colm.smyth@sun.com). It states possible enhancements on the case of an fallback language (for 2.0/8 English US as default). For time reason this will be further discussed/evaluated after 2.0/8 is shipped.

Special case: UI

In the case of b), it is possible that *Office does not support the currently active language of the desktop environment.

For StarOffice 8 (OpenOffice.org 2.0), *Office will automatically fallback to English (US) which means that support for English will always be bundled.

However it is desirable that for future versions of *Office, both the Setup UI and the main *Office UI will first display a dialog to allow the user to select from any of the supported languages. Each choice is offered as a full sentence in the respective language:

Click this option to choose English

Wahle diese Option um Deutsch zu nutzen

etc..

It may also display a hot-linked URL to a web-page where alternate language packs may be downloaded (the URL will encode the language and locale of the desktop environment as parameters, so that the web page may automatically adapt).

This has two advantages:

users who do not have English as a preferred language can immediately choose an alternate language without having to navigate and use the complicated Tools/Options dialog

*Office is not perceived as favouring English (US) over other languages/locales

Full Localised Language List

For the next release the list containing all available UI languages must not be completely localised to the current set UI (example: all entries in this list are in Korean if Korean is the chosen UI, after changing to German all entries are in German) but should represent every entry in its own locale (example: the entry German will always read “Deutsch”, the entry Korean will always read 한글 etc.)

Milestones

CWS syssettings01

In this CWS the changes to the UI Language / Locale get implemented.

CWS ??

The second milestone will contain the changes to the “Default Document Locales”.

Notes

References

[1] http://specs.openoffice.org/installation/system_integration/desktopIntegration.sxw

Language Selection

Page 5

Http://specs.openoffice.org/g11n/language_selection/language_selection.sxw

Oliver Braun

2004-07-20T12:17:11

Falko Tesch