From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frederik Carlier
Sent: Tuesday, 29 November, 2005 03:15
To: Bob Arnson; DEÁK JAHN, Gábor; WiX-devs
Subject: RE: WiX v2 & WiX v3 (was: RE: [WiX-devs] RFC: WixUI localization changes)I think that support for localization in the WiX UI library is a very important change, worth making a breaking change. As you know, many people do not speak English or at least not as their native language, and it is a huge advantage if an installer tool comes with an UI library in multiple languages.
I am heavily opposed against the WiX compiler defaulting to the English language. If anybody wishes to ship an UI library in a specific language by default (eg English for WixUI), then that is obviously fine, but why should the WiX compiler assume the English language by default?
As for the -loc switch, if I get it correct, you should see this as a change in WiXUI and not WiX itself. The WiXUI library is very young, hence, making a breaking change to it should not be a big deal. Given that it has a number of important bugs in the latest release, I think it is safe to assume that there is not a high dependency on WiXUI.
As for the v2 & v3 issue, I assume this is the typical stable/unstable branch. Usually, it is a good time for the documentation to get updated when unstable begins to gear towards stable or at least is reasonably feature complete.
Frederik.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Bob Arnson
Sent: Tue 11/29/2005 6:55 AM
To: 'DEÁK JAHN, Gábor'; 'WiX-devs'
Subject: RE: WiX v2 & WiX v3 (was: RE: [WiX-devs] RFC: WixUI localization changes)
> And, I suppose, v3 will remain either CVS-only or, if
> available for direct download, clearly marked as unstable
> development version. Then, I stop considering it for
> inclusion in the tutorial for now.
Rob will correct any mischaracterizations, but I don't think that's the
right way to look at the two branches. WiX 2.0 is basically "done" -- if it
were a commercial product, we'd have sent the bits for CD mastering and
already bought the beer for the ship party.<g> The only changes that should
be happening in WiX 2.0 now are bug fixes. New features aren't appropriate,
because almost any feature work has a chance of destablizing the code.
WiX 3.0 is where active development is happening. That doesn't mean it's
unstable, just that it hasn't yet gone through the long baking period that
WiX 2.0 has. It's new, it hasn't proven itself yet. And there are no
promises that your WiX sources and build scripts will work throughout the
3.0 series.
Now, the loc work for WixUI is isolated from the core tools. (In fact, the
original loc work relied on a WiX 3.0 feature, but Derek suggested backing
off from it.) But the build change to add a -loc switch is a breaking
change, so it's not something we want to force on users without talking
about it first -- because it breaks the rules about 2.0 stability.
> But let's go back to the -loc switch for a minute. I have to
> ask because I don't know the internal details and it's easier
> to ask you than to start to find out for myself. Yes, v3 will
> have the strings embedded but overridable. But is there
> something that would make it impossible to equip the linker
> with a default mechanism? If it can't resolve a string and it
> has no -loc file specified by the user, it would first
> include a -loc English.wxl itself and try to resolve again.
> If it fails, it gives an error message. If the user has
> specified a -loc, it wouldn't try to include English.wxl
> itself. Is this impossible within the current way of doing things?
It's not a trivial change, I'd say. There's also a "code smell" about
hard-coding the name of the .wxl file. And which directory would the linker
look in for it?
More important, though, is that it's a change that might destabilize current
localization support. It might even touch other parts of the linker too.
That's probably not appropriate in an "extremely stable" branch.
So that's my two cents on the issue. If we're going to make a change, I'd
rather it be the simplest change possible.
> * I use the complete UIsample stuff, with the administrative
> dialogs included. As far as I can tell from the source, those
> are not yet in WixUI. These, plus the localization (which I'm
> willing to contribute for my language, of course) is what I'd
> expect. What's the roadmap? Is this to be expected as things
> are now or are helping hands required to reach this level?
Admin dialogs are on my list, but fairly low.
sig://boB
http://bobs.org
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Title: RE: WiX v2 & WiX v3 (was: RE: [WiX-devs] RFC: WixUI localization changes)
WixUI is young indeed.<g> Hence this thread...Short
of making WixUI its own project, I want it to respect the state of the rest of
the toolset. That means that WixUI in WiX 2.0 should get stable and stay stable.
I want it to have a decent feature set that allows for growth, though, which --
in my mind, anyway -- includes localization support. New features would live in
WiX 3.0 and might make it to WiX 2.0 after they were proven in
3.0.
