Piaip's tools for Mozilla Translation


This page contains program/tools made (or tweaked from other's work) by myself to help translating Mozilla (localization).

Since Firefox 1.0PR, the locale structure has changed entirely. The old MozillaTranslator cannot keep going anymore, so I've made a whole new system named 'MozLCDB' (Mozilla Locale Database).

Some notes for Firefox 0.9+, Thunderbird 0.7:
Recently Firefox/Thunderbird has changed their win32 installer from Mozilla SFX to 7zip SFX. That means you CAN NOT use mozip to extract the files anymore. What you need now is a 7zip and read this note by me. Some notes about how to make extension versions of firefox language pack is also included in the note.

Current Tools for download
MozLCDB: Mozilla Locale Database
The new total solution for Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Netscape, replacement for MozillaTranslator.
mozextrdf.pl
A perl program to generate install.rdf for new Firefox/Thunderbird extension.
swlocalelite.xul (Please save the link target to another file, of you'll just see a demo)
To make "language pack as extension" possible, you must generate a correct "install.rdf" and a locale switcher. For Firefox 1.0+ , (1.0PR is NOT INCLUDED!) Firefox team says there are 2 ways to switch locale. Set general.useragent.locale, or invoke command line with -UILocale aa-BB. Appraently, command line is only for localized installers, so a LP as extension needs to set pref.
swlocalelite.xul is a lite weight locale switcher written by me to do locale switching. It is written to be small and easily attached to any language pack and modified.
To install: fetch the file by URL given above, copy it into anywhere with correct contents.rdf , and update your optionsURL entry in install.rdf to match its new location. For example, optionsURL="chrome://lp-zh-TW/content/swlocalelite.xul"
mozip.c and mozip.exe
Current version: 0.2
The 'mozip' is a program to create W32 localized builds.
This version does not need Cygwin anymore.
Warning: mozip used Windows API that implemented correcly on NT based environments, like Windows 2000/XP. If you want to use it on 95/98/ME systems, you're on your own. It is reported that on 98/ME, some people cannot compress(update) files.
If you are new to mozip, take a look at this good tutorial by Mark Tyndall.
I've posted its usage on the mailing list (some are archived below), so no more documents here. And do not disturb me for that.
P.S.: The mozip is ONLY tested and purposed to run on Windows 2000 platform (now turned into XP Pro since I've got a new Compaq Evo N800v). If you want to try on Windows 95/98, you are on your own. mozip used system calls to update 'Resource' so you'd better run it on NT series.

Expired Stuff. Most people don't need them.
Mozilla Translator 4.36 + piaip eXtension (mtX)
Current Version: 1.2
This project has been shutdown. And for versions after Firefox 1.0PR, Thunderbird 0.8, Mozilla 1.8, you'd better change to MozLCDB.
MtX (MozillaTranslator + eXtension) is my tweaked version from MozillaTranslator version4.36.
I don't suggest you using this if you are not very familiar with Mozilla Localization. You may better try the latest version of original MozillaTranslator (at least 5.02 now) instead.
The version number of all MtX are based on which version of Mozilla are they dedicated to. Eg, 'mt099' are developed for Mozilla 0.9.9 and later versions.
Version release notes (what has been changed):
mtx12 (1.2)
  1. 'Import' has been removed since we use almost the same format with MT4.36.
  2. 'Export' has been reduced. Currently only 'Write specified JAR' works. 'Write XPI' has been removed because packing on my own will be better. 'Write all jar' is used to export all jars according to names specified in 'Manage install'.
  3. The 'contents.rdf' generation has been extremly changed to overcome recently broken localeVersion in chromes. I used regular expression to make it more correct. This is so great.
  4. Images (help/image) are known not to work. You have to extract and repackage it.
  5. Too bad my JDK 1.4.1 keeps crashing after running JBuilder on my XP SP1, so I will stop developing new version for a while until some big change forced me to do so.
  6. Maybe I will stop developing this program since I've found that batch processing the glossary file with Python is much more easier. Recently I use my own python script named 'fixmt.py' to do advanced merge, strip work. With Netscape 7.01 (I started with Moz1.2.1 glossary), it helped me to reduce 3000 untranslated mesages to 13XX untranslated. That really helps. Maybe I will put it here someday.
mtx099 (0.9.9)
  1. 'localeVersion' has been supported in both generating'contents.rdf' and in UI.
  2. for installs with name containing 'Region', MtX will automatically treat it as 'region' locale and make necessary changes.
  3. After update, those original text with only one char will be set as 'keep origin' automatically.
mtx094 (0.9.4)
I forgot what has been changed in this release
wintools.zip
is the wintools.zip from Mozilla.org .
Notes and documents
Introduction to Phoenix Localization
My notes posted on mozilla-l10n mailing list to help translating Phoenix.
Articles about mozip posted on mozilla-l10n mailing list
As I told, usage of mozip can be fetched from mozilla-l10n mailing list. You may also google 'mozip' on groups.google.com (the mailing-list and newsgroup google).
Whatever I've copied several important articles here:
  1. The first announce of mozip and the original information for localized builds mentioned inside (provided by MARUYAMA)
  2. First Q and A
  3. (v0.1, maybe) new args
  4. v0.2 announce
Tutorial to Using Mozilla Translator
My tutorial posted on mozilla-l10n mailing list to help using MozillaTranslator 4.36. This is maybe the first tutorial to MT. Some people then made HTML versions, manuals and all kinds of documents for MozillaTranslator, while this is the original.
This tutorial is expired since Mozilla Translator has been advanced to 5.* and other documents are better, it's here just for memorial reason. A screenshot was included in that mail.

 

All tools here are used to make language packs and localized builds in Mozilla Localization: Traditional Chinese 

Best Regards,
--
Hung-Te Lin (Francis S.Lin) <piaip@csie.ntu.edu.tw>
    Find me on internet by using Google for 'piaip'