For those who are new to OpenSolaris, Sun has prepared a short video introducing the Package Manager, or the graphical user interface (GUI) for the Image Packaging System (IPS) introduced in OpenSolaris 2008.05. Package Manager lets you install/uninstall software to OpenSolaris, which makes it one of the most important tools. The screen-cast takes only 8 minutes and explains how to use the Package Manager for the common tasks. Now the best thing: you can watch the video while listening to a pleasant voice in your language. The following languages are covered: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. If you don't speak any of the languages listed, here is another incentive: it's a nice opportunity to hear how each of the languages sounds like. And you will also learn that Package Manager is диспетчер пакетов in Russian.

Sun Java Desktop System is a comprehensive, integrated desktop that includes community projects such as GNOME, StarOffice, Evolution, Mozilla products (Thunderbird, Firefox), and a full array of software utilities and accessories.
Sun relys on the cooperation with the communities and because the major part of JDS is composed from community projects, translations in JDS originate from the community volunteers. Sun also bundles into JDS its utilities and features which must be translated within Sun by translation vendors or by contributors from the OpenSolaris community.
If your are missing a huge amount of translation, you have a chance to contribute with your piece. The following steps describe how to add translations into JDS or investigate the reason why they are not present in the current version of JDS. For better interpretation I've chosen the GNOME application 'gedit' and French.

1. Check the current status of translation for your desired language in GNOME community. The latest branch of the GNOME project is marked as HEAD or development:
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/

or for more advanced users check the svn status directly:

e.g.
% svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gedit/trunk gedit
% cd gedit/po
% vi fr.po

2. If you find out that there are untranslated messages, you have two options:
a) Become a member of the GNOME community and get involved (contribute with your translations)
http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/JoiningTranslation

or

b) File a bug into the GNOME bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ and wait for a fix or suggest a patch:

% cp fr.po fr.po.orig
% vi fr.po - update strings with your translation
% diff fr.po.orig fr.po > fr.po.patch - attach this file to the bug

3. If you find all messages properly translated in the community, they are probably not propagated in the current Solaris. The integration of JDS into Solaris is synchronized with the GNOME schedule. New JDS with the current official branch of GNOME is integrated once the desktop is stable. A while after the community marks the development branch as a official.
In a meanwhile the JDS team regularly releases a devel branch of JDS called Vermillion devel. Once the development of the JDS devel is at the end, the build is stable, this Vermillion devel is shipped into Solaris. After that date all your translation should be visible in the latest version of Solaris.
If you want to test the latest changes and new applications in the Vermillion devel, visit this page: http://dlc.sun.com/osol/jds/downloads/current/

4. If you didn't find your missing translations in the GNOME community, the messages come from the different source or community (e.g. Pidgin, Mozilla, RealPlay, Helix Player) or they are Sun specific messages. The Sun specific messages appear usually in menus or in the Sun specific applications (e.g. volume control).

The latest status can be found at: http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/jds/spec-files/trunk/po-sun/

%cd [application]/po-sun/  - enter into the appropriate directory for your component
%vi fr.po  - there are .po files for each language that someone has contributed

or for more advanced users, you can check out the svn module (only read mode)

% svn co svn+ssh://anon@svn.opensolaris.org/svn/jds/spec-files/trunk spec-files

If you decide to be engaged in the translations, there are additional steps to perform:

a) You need to get a write permission in base SVN, affiliate with JDS and ask dermot.mccluskey@sun.com. Everything documented here: http://opensolaris.org/os/project/jds/documents/requesting_svn_account/

b) Check out the files:
% svn co svn+ssh://${your_account}@opensolaris.org/svn/jds/spec-files/trunk spec-files

c) Update po files with your translations:
% cd spec-files/po-sun
and edit the po file related to your language

d) Document your changes in the ChangeLog file and commit it into the repository

% cd ..
% vi ChangeLog
2008-04-17  Your NAME

    * po-sun/*/po-sun/fr.po: Updated translations of firefox and thunderbird for French.

% svn commit ChangeLog po-sun/$module/po-sun/fr.po

For those who have tried OpenSolaris 2008.05, you probably see there are only UTF-8 locales available in GDM login manager. You might ask, where is C/POSIX or where are ISO locales. I want it, I need it, how can I get it?

  C,ISO and other non UTF-8 locales are still available. All non utf-8 locales are placed in SUNWlang-*-extra packages. The reason is that in OpenSolaris UTF-8 locales are ...

[Read More]

There is an OpenSolaris chat under way in SecondLife right now. Anybody can join the meeting to ask the key OpenSolaris engineers, such as Tim Cramer, executive director, Stephen Hahn, distinguished engineer, Glynn Foster, OpenSolaris product manager, David Comay, principal engineer, any question. You can either log in with your SecondLife avatar, or you can connect to the webstream and use the chat interface to speak. The show started on July 9 at 16.30 CET (Prague) and the main program is supposed to take 1 hour, so hurry up!

UPDATE: Angad Singh captured the whole chat transcript and posted it on his blog for all of you to read it should you have missed the event. Photo gallery is also available.

Most of the OpenSolaris Developer Conference 2008 presentations were recorded by the organizers and now you can watch any presentation of your choice on-line on Google Videos. Just search for "osdevcon" keyword on Google or see the OSDevCon 2008 Program to see the full list of presentation slides and videos. The video recording of our Translation of OpenSolaris presentation is available as well. Please check it out, rate it, add comments. Any feedback is welcome.

I and several guys from our G11n team had a chance to visit OpenSolaris Developer Conference (OSDEVCON2008). This was the 2nd year of the conference and it was held from Jun 25 - Jun 27 in Prague. The first day (Wed) was focused on Tutorials, Thu and Fri on Presentations. Video and slides will be available at program page of OSDEVCON. The G11n Prague team introduced a presentation about 'Translation of OpenSolaris' - new pilot project focusing on end-to-end process about translation of SW messages and documentation in one place.

[Read More]