Re: [widgets] Removed LocalizableString interface from Widgets API

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