- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:26:50 +0100
- To: "Marcos Caceres" <marcosc@opera.com>, "Robin Berjon" <robin@berjon.com>
- Cc: "Arthur Barstow" <art.barstow@nokia.com>, "public-webapps WG" <public-webapps@w3.org>
On Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:56:43 +0100, Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com> wrote: > On Jan 11, 2011, at 08:24 , Marcos Caceres wrote: >> On 1/10/11 4:28 PM, Robin Berjon wrote: >>> On Jan 10, 2011, at 16:00 , Marcos Caceres wrote: >>>> I would be happier if we could break up the Widget P&C spec into: >>>> >>>> * Packaging (zip only requirements) * XML Configuration for >>>> widgets * XML Localization and Folder-based Localization >>> >>> I could live with that. It's not that I'm against l12n, I just don't >>> think that it needs to be part of the standard given its complexity >>> cost and likely actual usage. >> >> I would argue that it's not particularly complicated to implement, and >> we are seeing it used in Opera extensions: we have extensions in 15 >> languages as of today in our catalog [0]. > > Nothing in P+C is super-hard to implement, but the l12n parts account > for most of the complexity, and the primary reason why such an > implementation is more than just reading a Zip archive plus a little > extra processing. Well, that depends on how you define "a little more". >> TOTAL (all languages): 335 of which 74 use another language (20% of the >> catalog). 20% is fairly significant and certainly indicative of "actual >> usage". To put into perspective, we have had over 4 million downloads >> of extensions since launch. > > If it's only 20% then I maintain that it's not enough to justify the > feature. We have a 20/80 situation here, when we'd want an 80/20 :) For i18n I would suggest that 20% is actually a pretty good number for a new system, and that if we ever get 80% it would be amazing. How many developers of something as simple as extensions are multilingual in the first place?. A quick search on most popular extensions (which get better highlighting) today shows that of the top 50, 9 are localised to two or three languages with those localisations also being in the top 50. Looking at the newest 50, the proportion is 13/50 which suggests that it's an increasing trend. About a third of extensions added since Marcos counted are localised - still not 80%, but not bad. Given that there are also non-localised extensions written in different languages to do the same thing, I think this is >> It's evident that the i18n model is usable by runtimes, widget >> galleries, and developers. > > It's usable, it's just excessive complexity to value IMHO. If it gets 1/3 usage over a longer term, I would suggest that it's actually very valuable. > But as I said, if we split the specs into pieces I'm happy! Well, that resolves the issue through administrative trickery. But I think it would be a shame if something that offers so much to i18n gets left behind by enough implementors to seriously impact interoperability and therefore the cost of localisation for developers. cheers Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Monday, 17 January 2011 13:27:29 UTC