Thank you very much for the write up! I also believe L20n is (was) one of the legacy FxOS smart phone project left to the Web -- there are no comparable solution for localization for client web application out there.
On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 3:50 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Wanted to give you an update on the current status of L10n/Intl in Gaia. > > === Current Status === > > I just successfully finished migrating all TV apps to L20n and I migrated as > many "Phone" apps to L20n as I could over last months. > > I believe that at this point all critical apps (like System, Settings, > Keyboard etc.) that are likely to be useful for future CD projects or as a > base for new apps have really clean L10n API usage and they all rely on > L20n.js which is uses the final version of the L10n API. > > All the code in ./shared/ and ./tv-apps also have all their code refactored > and up to the current API standards. > > On top of that, we have four more elements of the system: > - mozIntl[0] is a wrapper on Intl API that gives us access to future Intl > API extensions like UnitFormatter, ListFormatter, RelativeTimeFormatter, > DurationFormatter etc. > - IntlHelper[1] is a small library that simplifies writing code that caches > Intl formatter and invalidates them when language/timeformat etc. changes. > - L20n Service[2] is an extension of L20n.js library that operates in > ServiceWorker which makes us ready for the NGA (and is used by the Music app) > - L20n Build[3] System is our plug into Gaia build system that enables us to > prepare and optimize Gaia apps. > > L10n Team (Stas and me) are committed to maintain this code and we will reuse > it in other projects so expect us to keep dropping updates to those files and > small refactors of code in gaia repository if needed. > > === What's left === > > There are several things we did not finish, and they still require work: > > - There are still apps that rely on obsolete use of mozL10n.get call. It's > been a very long ride, but since Firefox OS 1.4 we reduced the number of call > of this function from around 1500 to 289 [4]. > All of the remaining ones are in ./apps (none in ./shared or ./tv_apps). The > biggest offender is ./communications with around 100 of those calls. > I don't see us working on that anymore, as it requires good understanding of > the app code, deep reviews and requires extra carefulness to avoid > regressions and I don't believe we are in a good position to secure that. > > - There is still code in ./shared that uses l10n.js' `navigator.mozL10n` API > instead of l20n.js' `document.l10n`. It's not significant - 10 calls in 6 > files, mostly related to ./communications code. > > We landed a l10n.js-2-l20n.js proxy in L10n.js, which means that code that > relies on l10n.js can use l20n.js API, so those should be safe to migrate if > anyone is going to work on those. > > - Because of the use of mozL10n.get, there are still 21 apps in ./apps > folder that use l10n.js. We are not going to maintain that library, and if > any of those apps will be planned for production, they should migrate to > l20n.js before they are released. We'll be happy to help with the transition. > > > === What's next for us === > > As I said before, we're committed to maintain the L10n/Intl APIs that we > developed for Gaia. We believe that they are the best technologies for > writing multi-lingual web applications, and we are going to use them for all > future projects. > I'm not aware of any CD projects that are at the stage of writing production > ready code yet, so we expect to use Firefox Desktop components and Firefox OS > TV as our driving platforms for now. > > The next big thing, that we've been putting off for way too long and which > has been limiting our localization capabilities is the new file format for > L10n. > Because our primary target has been Gaia and Gaia originally chose a > proprietary modification of the .properties format, L20n.js has been using it > so far, but we've always believed that we need a new file syntax that will > allow localizers to design better messages and lately, we've been exploring > the potential of interactions between localization (messages) and > internationalization (date formatting, unit formatting, list formatting, > plural forms etc.). > > We're pretty close to start testing it on localizers and we expect to spend > first part of the next quarter on getting our toolchain up to speed, getting > tutorials and documentation and making the new syntax work in parallel with > .properties. > > We're also working with TC39 group to move pieces of L20n/mozIntl that we > designed for Gaia to EcmaScript 2016 and 2017. > > If you're working on a project that will need l10n/intl, you can safely rely > on the L10n/Intl APIs that I listed above. We're very confident that it's the > best technology on the market :) > > Enjoy hacking the Free Web! > zb. > > [0] https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/shared/js/moz_intl.js > [1] https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/shared/js/intl_helper.js > [2] https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/shared/js/intl > [3] https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/build/l10n/l20n.js > [4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1020138 > _______________________________________________ > dev-fxos mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos _______________________________________________ dev-fxos mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos
