1513321 - Thunderbird 60+ needs translation of Lightning to be included in the relevant language packs

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Screenshot-2018-12-11-19-46-48.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

Open Thunderbird's menu or Calendar.


Actual results:

Events and Tasks - position in the menu is not translated, Lightning itself is not translated.


Expected results:

Lightning is always in English despite installing the relevant language pack. Since Lightning is bundled with Thunderbird 60+ its localization should be also included in each of the language packs.

Lots of people are complaining about this in various places, for example:

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53781

I'm sending screens how weird it looks. Thunderbird is fully localized except Lightning and it stands out badly.

Comment 1

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

What language version are you using?

Is it a distro build 60.2.1 with the proper xul-ext-lightning installed, or the Lightning from addons,thunderbird.net?

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

I use polish language but I saw many posts from various non-English users who complain about that too.
I use Manjaro KDE but I build Thunderbrid myself because I compile it with a unity patch for global menus (just as it is done in Ubuntu based distros).

I uninstalled Lightning and brought it back by configuration editor and resetting:

extensions.installedDistroAddon.{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}

However, Lightning was always in English for 2 years or so and it was annoying for others as well. Before Thunderbird 60 the only solution was to uninstall Lightning and install it from plugin downloaded from the site but with every update, Lightning was reverting back to English. You can find multiple threads on forums dedicated to this problem.

Now Lightning is included in Thunderbird and cannot be installed from plugin so reinstalling is not possible.

The problem is Lightning resources are not included in the default language packs provided by Mozilla. Instead, Thunderbird chose to have the build system generate multiple versions of the extension at compile time (on request), one for each language (at least on official Windows builds). Since compilation on Arch is not including all language versions from obvious reasons (there are sperate language packs to install) Lighting comes always in English.

The solution would be to include Lightning localization in proper language packs. Why localization for Lightning should be a choice for compilation when it is part of the Thunderbird core now? Since I can't get Lighting from an external source (as it was in the past) we are forced to English version only. It's time to change that and complete migration of Lighting to Thunderbird fully. Lack of localization looks very unprofessional.

Initially, I assumed the problem is just ignored but then I didn't find any actual current bugs reports so here I am.

Comment 3

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

I see. I just use the most recent version from Thunderbird. Currently 60.3.3. Ubuntu only provides 60.2.1.

I just downloaded this version of Thunderbird which I believe is the Polish version and it looks to me like the calendar is localized.

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/60.3.3/linux-x86_64/pl/

Since the distros don't bundle Lightning with the localized Thunderbird, and Ubuntu users have to install xul-ext-lightning which is always in English and that they provide. Is it possible that the distros are responsible for the localization?

I'll test tomorrow with a LiveUSB or CD in another language, use their Thunderbird and Lightning extension and see what I get.

Did you search the Mozilla Localization project for any relevant bugs?

I found this for the Lightning Only component, "Note that localization issues should be reported to the Mozilla Localization project." when doing a Product/Component search here.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Calendar

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

I'm not sure why you keep mentioning Ubuntu. Manjaro is based on Arch. The situation is this:

Arch compiles Thunderbird in NON-LOCALIZED, English version (so the link to the polish source file doesn't apply in this situation) and provides language packs separately. So in order to get Thunderbird in polish, I must install those packages:

thunderbird
thunderbird-i18n-pl

This is more practical because thunderbird package must be compiled just once and then compiling of language packs is quick. Compiling thunderbird for each language is just a waste of resources (considering how time-consuming that process is, for me, compiling thunderbird takes ca. 2 hours) and the Arch team is not so big and no one is paying them.


Lightning is included in thunderbird package but localization for Lightning is not included in thunderbird-i18n-pl - that is the source of the problem.

So now the question is: are the localization packs that Arch team provides lacking from the Lightning localization because the upstream source doesn't have it, or is Arch team forgetting to compile them with Lightning?

At the moment I found only info that Mozilla (or Thunderbird - I'm confused which is it) isn't providing it and that is what I'm trying to change. If, however, it turns out it's a matter of Arch team compilation, I will report it to them.

Currently, I'm using 6.3.3 Thunderbird but as I said, Lightning wasn't translated for over a year so this problem is very old and I'm surprised that no one stepped in.

I'm also not sure why are you mentioning xul-ext-lightning? The plugin in a separate file is not possible to install on Thunderbird 60+ and I haven't found any version for it. On the site, you have the only old version which massively confuses users because they somehow lost Lightning and they don't know they can bring it back doing some config shinanigans. This is a very bad solution.

Lightning is part of the Thunderbird 60+ now but is shown confusingly as a plugin. This all produces this problem with translation. If Lightning was integrated with the Thunderbird in a more natural way, it would probably be fine. As I understand it, Thunderbird team didn't want to show Lightning as an integrated part to avoid comments that it's bloated and that "I don't need it" but it creates another set of problems for people who use and rely on the calendar. I saw many people who gave up on Thunderbird just because of that reason - they think that Lightning doesn't exist for newer Thunderbird and even if someone has it, it's just not localized and weird to use.
In my opinion, the calendar should be just an option to turn on (off by default) and not shown as an extension. This would also close that schizophrenic situation with localization of this component.

Since the discussed problem here are not problems of the localization itself (but where it is put to thunderbird source files), this is not a matter for the localization project.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Shouldn't the status be set as a duplicate and not invalid in such case? The original bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1469678

is still not resolved after so many months. The simple premise is: Lightning is a part of the Thunderbird so it should come with language packs, otherwise thousands of users get untranslated Lightning (Arch, Fedora, RHEL, etc.).