LocalizedCDImageTools

Revision 1 as of 2011-05-18 14:41:19

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  • Launchpad Entry: desktop-o-loco-cds

  • Created: 2011-05-18

  • Contributors: Mark Shuttleworth, Didier Roche, Colin Watson, Kyle Nitzsche

  • Packages affected: ubiquity, cdimage, creation of new packages

Summary

Tools and a workflow to provide truly localized CD images. This goes beyond merely installing the right translations, we also want to provide localized default bookmarks, input methods, chat protocols, radio stations, or background images.

Create a set of tools for providing these as ubuntu-l10n-<language> addon packages (as declarative as possible), and build CD images with this extra customization package.

With this, concrete localization projects like desktop-o-qin-ubuntu-china will be a lot easier to implement.

Release Note

To be done when implementation is at beta.

Rationale

Our only action after the user chooses his locale is to install the matching language packs and support (dictionaries, etc.), but true localization goes way beyond that: Locos want to customize default bookmarks, locale specific chat protocols, or preconfigured ibus input method modules. Right now Locos both have to figure out how to customize these settings by themselves, which is not easy and also rather intrusive sometimes. Often these changes can't be preserved during upgrades, and there is only little QA and advertising happening on those images.

By providing an official method for localizing CD images we want to make these Loco efforts both more visible and also much easier to implement.

This also mitigates the eternal CD size resource conflicts on which language packs to ship on the official CD releases.

User stories

  • Li downloads the "Ubuntu Chinese Edition" from cdimage.ubuntu.com (note that this is only a strawman name, CD mirroring is not part of this spec). gfxboot, ubiquity, and the live session start in Simplified Chinese with the sunpinyin ibus input method ready and active. She opens Firefox and clicks on the "DWNews.com" bookmark in the toolbar (note that this is just an example), a popular Chinese news site. She opens the chat window and is able to add her QQ account.

  • Didier already has an official Ubuntu 11.10 CD. He chooses "French" in Ubiquity,
  • Kyle prepares a customized version of Ubuntu for Compu1337, a large OEM. He prepares a compu1337-default-settings package as a copy of the ubuntu-l10n-template package, sticks in an appropriate background.jpg, and adds it to the project seeds. When booting the generated image, the default desktop background image shows a big Compu1337 logo.

Assumptions

Design

Locale specific browser bookmarks, Unity launchers, radio stations in the music player, pre-configured ibus modules,

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Not necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during testing, and to show off after release. Please add an entry to http://testcases.qa.ubuntu.com/Coverage/NewFeatures for tracking test coverage.

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Unresolved issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.


CategorySpec