L10n/HomePage/Status/2007-05-16
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Meeting Details
- 9:00am Pacific, 12:00pm Eastern
- 650-903-0800 x91 Conf# 206 (US/INTL)
- irc.mozilla.org #l10n-drivers for backchannel
Attendees
Axel, SethB, Mic, TimR, Tony, WilC, Pascal
Meeting Notes
Fx 3 Timeline
We are expecting to do the following two main things in order to improve our localization process for Fx3: offer nightly builds to test against and put in place a 2 week string freeze before Beta 2. New this year we are going to be able to offer nightly builds for the localizers to test against. This is a change in our build process, we will be running checks against the en-US from the time nightly is actually complete. We are able to do this due to the QA testing infrastructure that we previously discussed and which RobCee and Pike (Axel) are putting in place. We expect this will allow us to give 24 hours notice to Localizers so they can test if their builds are working properly. This should minimize the time and effort to address any errors and increase general stability and quality.
Based on Axel's conversation with Schrep, there are too many variables to suggest Localizers to do a Beta 1 version. For example, there are still large chunks of UI expected to land just before en-US Beta 1 is released. We're all operating under the assumption that the amount of string changes after Beta1 will be under control, hence our recommendation to involve Localizers between Beta 1 and Beta 2. Like last year (for Fx2) we will not delay Beta 1 to include Localized builds, the intention is to ensure the code is more stable for when Localizers get involved between Beta 1 and 2.
New this year we will delay Beta 2 to get localized builds. We will be putting in place a 2-week string freeze, meaning there will be 2 weeks before the release of Beta 2 without any string changes. We expect this will enable Localizers to be able test their version before this string freeze. We will offer two types of testing, 3rd party testing by Smartware and our own QA testing. The SmartWare testing will test for language accuracy for all Tier 1 and most of Tier 2 locales and should take 3 days per locale. They have specialists in each locale and should be able to handle the work over 2 weeks. Other locales will get Mozilla QA testers to spot check each locale for e.g., funny font interpretation, help menu accuracy, etc., which should take 30 minutes per locale per platform. This timing will be affected by whatever other priorities the QA team will be doing for Fx3.
We haven't dropped idea of some level of automated testing done between beta 1 and beta 2 to give us an idea of how well things are running or not; although this is dependent on many variables. There are XML parser tests, QA tests for preferences like key branding and possibly more. If we can write an automated tool to get screen shots on all 3 platforms we may be able to reduce work required to look at a particular build. This would be good possibly using eggplant and Tracy and Juan from the QA team could possibly work on this. This automated testing would still need to happen when UI is frozen (either 2 week string freeze period or after beta 2). It is best to use builds the Localizers and Build team have signed off on and apply the same test and time cycle as we did for Fx2. ACTION: Tim will check in on this
Our next discussion item (for next week) is to ensure the testing requirements are clear. Meaning, to know exactly which tests we want done during what time period. A bad thing would be tests oozing out of nowhere (like let's add this one and that one, etc). We need to define exactly what our main focus for this should be; ensure we're working on same main tests; furthermore, it would be nice to write a list of what we're planning with rob. Axel has created a write-down for l10n-testing (not in right order) but is intact. He has also proposed another way to conduct the search testing. This will also be a discussion item for next week. Folks can also check out Firefox:1.5.0.12-2.0.0.4:Test_Plan:beta_checks
ACTION: Tim to get Clint and RobCee to attend next week's session
QA
TimR on QA; no news :-)
PostMortem on Fx2
no news ACTION: Mic to remind people day before meeting
De-betaing progress
For release 2004 we expect to release Afrikaans and Belarusian Sill a blocker on Kurdish There are still some problems for Gregorian. There is an issue with Mac platform, menu items look like question marks. Our general steps for this are that the Localizer produces a build, puts it into beta, they test and let us know what they tested, QA does spot check and then Build team puts the final Build into one of releases. Based on a recent chat on IRC it seems like there are still questions about process. We can't hold Localizer to any test we want to run. It seems fundamentally bad that we may be wasting people's time by using wrong tests; we need a check in on this (write tests to get platform coverage and amend with expectations on usage during beta phase). This is a longer discussion for another time ACTION: Mic to add to agenda for next week
Buffet for Localizers
Seth reported he met with 3 members of marketing team to continue to flesh out what we can offer Localizers to better support them. John Slater is working with Set to understand what it would take to create a kit of marketing stuff for Localizers. JTBatson is leading an effort to create more marketing activity in different countries. He is currently trying to identify local people to connect with to bring more formal marketing process and show there is strong interest from the marketing team in Mountain View USA to support them. Set will get a summary of what JT is trying to do. Mellisa - who handles PR - is creating a plan to create general press releases and a PR kit. It's her goal to accomplish this by the end of June. We expect it should be easy to drop this into the "kit" we'd send to Localizers. Seth will also speak with Tristan/Anjalie about right people in Europe to connect to and he will follow up with Pascal to be sure he's not duplicating any existing efforts. ACTION: Seth will reach out to Gandalf on these efforts to understand his perspective ACTION: Seth to build a wiki page about all these efforts
AMO
Nothing to report from WilC :-)
Documentation
Mic asked for more feedback on the L10n pages she's been working on. Check out
Axel says the Requirements page is still buggy (some of the data is inaccurate e.g., eBay on Polish) ACTION: Mic to re-validate the data and follow up with Axel to get additional comments on the other pages
Next week's agenda
For next week's discussion Pascal proposed we also talk about how to help locales with smaller teams (like 1 person teams). We will try and get to discussing this but we are worried we might get busy with some of the build issues we discussed above.
