411371 - come up with some guidelines for localization of default bookmarks

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Translations, defect)

Description

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Follow up from bug 377934. I need to do this...

Comment 1

[Marcello Testi]

I'd require localizers to post a webpage (on Caminol10n) with the complete localized bookmark list and with specific comments that explain what has been changed and why. The post should be labeled with the version where changes were made and updated every time changes are made again.

Comment 2

[Marcello Testi]

Sorry for partially contradict my previous comment: I wasn't sure about reopening bug 377934 or say something here.
Since I finally don't want to get in the way of work already done and discussed, I'd add here that the load of English content resources doesn't fit well our localizers' moms and, for practical reasons, IMO the best policy should be to keep only Camino-related stuff (possibly pointing to localized pages, at least in cb.o) in localized bookmarks.

Comment 3

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Attachment: Proposal v1

I was feeling inspired with writing guidelines and rules (working on another bug) and I decided to write the attached first draft of guidelines for localization of bookmarks.

Comment 4

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Marcello, just to address your comment:

We want to keep the bookmarks mostly as is (though if you have specific suggestions, now is the time). To help localizers, we want to tell them what to change and what to leave alone. I think these guidelines will help with that and will make sure they get relevant changes.

Comment 5

[Tobias Stohr]

Hi,

I just looked through your proposals Samuel and in most cases agree with them and you.

Three things to mention:

1. Yahoo.
There are localized versions of yahoo. E.g. yahoo.de or de.yahoo.com (yahoo.de redirects to de.yahoo.com, but de.yahoo.com makes it easier to verify that this is actually yahoo and not my great phishing site). The full list yahoo localizations can be found here:
http://world.yahoo.com/
Some,like Catalan, don't offer the portal (inlcuding news and this stuff) but only the search engine. Since yahoo.com offers this portal, I think it shouldn't be linked to these yahoo versions. Instead link to yahoo.com or the nearest version with this portal.

2. Google Maps.
The google.com domain redirects you to your local version, e.g. google.de, but maps.google.com won't do this. Instead it just loads the localized page.
The problem could be: since cookies are domain based, a cookie stored for google.de won't be usable for google.com. I don't know if this actually is a problem, it just came to my mind.
This problem could also have affect the yahoo site.

3. News.
This is the biggest problem at all. At least I think so.
Providing some a localized Camino version, partly localized bookmarks, but only english news (except of google news. Google redirects, but the problem mentioned under 2. could show up.)
I see, understand and know that especially politics are a very sensitive part. But I think we should add at least one or two localized news sites, among the local versions of yahoo and google news.
A fully localized version of the news section will be too hard to control (but did anyone for older Camino versions?) and a Camino version representing a special political view should never be release.
I looked at how the Firefox team copes with this and how Safari does it.
Firefox just has a self composed RSS-Feed with four different German news sites, which belong to their correspondent public broadcasting service.
This could be one way.
The other way could be Safaris approach: They added some German news sites and probably left all English ones, which results in 19 sites under the news section. Definitely too much.

A compromise for us could be only to add one or two sites, like mentioned above, or use the localized ones from Safari. Which would be six for the German version.

Personally I'd prefer a version with yahoo and google localized, and two more news sites added. If present, reliable and not controlled by the country's government (which raises the question: where is the point when you call a media controlled by its government?) a public broadcasting news site, like bbc, should be added.
The localised news sites, including google and yahoo, should be moved to the top or the whole section alphabetically ordered.

This should be a good agreement between hardly controllable news sites in foreign languages (where all sites are localized) and no localized news sites at all.
My personal wish is a be completely localized news section, but this is just too hard to controll. In that case you'd have to rely on the localizers choice.


One thing I'd add to the guidelines anyway: most sites redirect from the localized ones to its "mother" site, or whatever you'd call it. Example: yahoo.de redirects to de.yahoo.com. To make it easier to verify the integrity of those sites and their belonging to the US one, the link should be: de.yahoo.com and not yahoo.de, for example.

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Comment on attachment 305170 [details]
Proposal v1

>Camino includes many bookmarks that have a en-US focus and might not be relevant to other locales. To combat this, we've created this document which discusses which bookmarks should be translated and which should remain, despite their en-US focus.

an
s/combat/address/
s/which discusses/to list/
s/translated/localized/

>Mac Links
>
>In the Bookmarks Menu under Mac News & Support, the “Apple - Support” URL may be localized to the nearest locale to your localization. For more information on which URL is appropriate, please see: http://www.apple.com/support/country/

s/to the nearest/to use the most appropriate/

>Likewise, the “Apple - Downloads” URL may be localized to the nearest locale if one exists.

As above.

Note in both of these cases you discuss "URLs"; we need to be clear where, if anywhere, bookmark names can be localized.

>If there is no Apple support or download site for you locale, these bookmarks should be left as is.

s/site/page/ ?
s/you/your/
s/as is/as-is/

>All other URLs should remain unchanged despite their en-US focus.

Macworld has local editions for en-UK, es, de, it, se, and en-AU; we should allow those l10ns to replace macworld.com with the local version.

>Shopping
>
>Under the Shopping category in the Bookmarks Menu, the Amazon.com, craigslist, and eBay links may be localized. If no localized versions of those sites exist for your locale, these bookmarks should remain en-US.

I looked at craigslist Paris and Torino (and compared them to criagslist Atlanta), and both major European cites seemed sparsely populated with content, all in English, seemingly all from expats.

I think we should allow localizers to remove craigslist if they do not feel craigslist is sufficiently active or local for their locale.

>At no time should any localizer change these Shopping links or any other link in our default bookmarks to contain any sort of revenue sharing code or method.

We probably want this in a general guideline at the beginning, reworded slightly ("any link...including Shopping")

>Social
>
>Under the Social category in the Bookmarks menu, all links may be changed to link to locale or language specific versions of those websites. However, no links should be changed to other websites than those four.

Flickr and LiveJournal seem to auto-localize based on accept-lang but don't currently seem to provide real localized urls; we might want to note this.  I'm not fond of how hard it is to find the list of langs on the other two.

>Tech News
>
>These links should remain unchanged.

Same comment as before about MacWorld.

>Google Maps
>
>The Google Maps link in the Bookmark bar may not be changed. Google will auto-detect the current language.

I really dislike that Google Maps always loads centered on the US; that seems really inappropriate.

>Yahoo
>
>The Yahoo link may not be changed.
>
>(Maybe? I can't find language-specific versions of Yahoo, only location-specific versions.)

I'd rather have us using fr.yahoo.com all over the Francophone world than English Yahoo in France just because Yahoo does sites based on locales rather than languages.  Moreover, most of our l10ns are languages commonly spoken in only one locale, anyway, and the ones with major differences (formerly Chinese, Portuguese) ship multiple Camino l10ns.

We should also note Tobias's comment about using langDomain.site.com rather than a site.langDomain; it's a good point.

>News
>
>In the Bookmark bar, nothing in the News folder may be changed.

I think we should allow the BBC news sites to be localized where possible.

Likewise, we should localized the Yahoo! News sites (and their titles).

Note in this text the Google News auto-localizes.

I'd like to come up with something to address the other three, though.  MSNBC is really US-focused; NYTimes and Guardian are at least world-known as major English-language papers.

I can't imagine a French Camino without Le Monde, for example, which in my mind is considered by the world as the preeminent French newspaper.  Other countries (e.g. Germany, Spain, Italy) there are more "top" papers, and I admit I don't know enough about the politics.  I'd hope we could say "Choose a highly-respected international or national newspaper in your language" and trust the localizers to do the right thing.

If we allow additions, we need to make a comment about site design, no pop-ups, not being nasty to Camino, etc.

Maybe the thing to do for this section is by default say that (other than localizing BBC and Yahoo) for any additions/deletions/changes, file a bug with your proposed list, i.e. make it clear we do want to let l10ns add localized content here but that this section is a source of potential conflicts and needs to be discussed.

>Removing, Changing, and Adding Bookmarks
>
>At no time should a bookmark be removed, changed, or added unless it's explicitly mentioned in a section above.

s/it's/it is/

Add something here about not changing, removing, or adding  shortcuts and about removing or adding tab groups.

We might want to move this up front, too.

>Exceptions
>
>With all great guidelines come exceptions. If you believe there is a specific site which should be part of the default bookmarks for your specific language (not local area!), please file a bug in Bugzilla (under Camino::Translations) and the Camino team will evaluate it.

s/which/that/
s/local area/country/, but again note that the vast majority of our localizations are country-specific.
s/and/with your proposed changes, and/

I'd move this to the top under a "General Rules" heading, with the other general rules we've discussed or I've noted we need to add.

We should also address search engines, either in this document or a separate one.

Comment 7

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Attachment: Proposal v2

I've address all the changes you mentioned.

> We should also address search engines, either in this document or a separate
> one.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Google automatically detects your locale, no? If so, I think we're explicit enough that things shouldn't be added or changed and Google will just do the right thing. Do you just want a note that says "Don't change search engines"?

Comment 8

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

(In reply to comment #7)

> > We should also address search engines, either in this document or a separate
> > one.
> 
> I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Google automatically detects your
> locale, no? If so, I think we're explicit enough that things shouldn't be added
> or changed and Google will just do the right thing. Do you just want a note
> that says "Don't change search engines"?

Some l10ns already customize search engine sets (either/both explicit google.TLD engines or/and additional search engines) in addition to localizing the names of the engines.

Comment 9

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Comment on attachment 307899 [details]
Proposal v2

>Exceptions
>
>With all great guidelines come exceptions. If you believe there is a specific site which should be part of the default bookmarks for your specific language, please file a bug in Bugzilla (under Camino::Translations) with your proposed changes, and the Camino team will evaluate it.

Add something like

Note that you should consider site design, the use of pop-ups, and “sniffing” practices that lead to a bad Camino experience when evaluating sites you wish to consider for inclusion in the default bookmarks for your locale.

here so that we don't catch anyone off-guard with those considerations.

>Mac Links
>
>In the Bookmarks Menu under Mac News & Support, the “Apple - Support,” URL may be localized to use the most appropriate locale to your localization.

s/,”/”/
s/locale to/locale for/

>Likewise, the “Apple - Downloads,” URL may be localized 

Ditto the stray comma here.

>Macworld also has locale-specific sites. If one exists for your locale, or one similar, you may change this bookmark.

s/one similar/a locale similar to yours/

>Social
[...]
>should be changed to go to other websites than those four.

s/go to/point to/

>Note that Flickr and LiveJournal currently auto-localize depending on a user's accept-lang.

s/accept-lang/accept-language header/

>Tech News
>
>These links should remain unchanged with the exception of Macworld which may be localized per the instructions above.

s/unchanged/unchanged,/

>Google Maps
>
>The Google Maps link in the Bookmark bar may not be changed. Google will auto-detect the current language.

I think if maps.google.TLD exists for the TLD most appropriate for the locale, localizers should be instructed to use it.  It's dumb (and entirely inappropriate) seeing a map of the USA with Italian "chrome" instead of seeing a map of Italy if I'm using the Italian Camino.  Using maps.google.TLD violates our general rule about using lang.domain.com, but that's the only way Google Maps "localizes" its start location.

>Yahoo
>
>The Yahoo link may be changed to link to the most appropriate locale available on http://world.yahoo.com/. When available, please link to a yahoo.com address (i.e., fr.yahoo.com instead of yahoo.fr).

s/yahoo.com address/yahoo.com URL rather than a yahoo.TLD URL/

>News
[...]
>In the Bookmark bar, the BBC and Yahoo! News sites may be localized, along with their titles. Google News will auto-localize.

s/auto-localize/auto-localize the URL/

What about the title here?  We should let localizers change the title to match what Google displays (e.g., Google Actualités).

You've got a mixture of straight and curly quotes; I trust you'll fix those when you post this ;)

Again, I'd also like to see some text about localizing the toolbar search engines before I r+ this; see my previous comment.

Comment 10

[Tobias Stohr]

Additions to the news section:

1. BBC
This site refers to all localizations available:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/languages/
Please note, that they are ordered after continents, which means e.g. for French that this version covers more African than European topics. So the French localization should link to the BBC Worldwide Page at news.bbc.co.uk rather than www.bbc.co.uk/french.
Localizations using a localized page, should link to: www.bbc.co.uk/spanish instead of the redirected one: news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/
In case of changes to the BBC News page (they once changed their design which made my bookmark useless), the first URL will most likely hit the right page, while the second can be subject to change.

2. Yahoo! News
This is like the Yahoo link: links should refer to a yahoo.com URL.
The scheme looks like: TLD.news.yahoo.com .
Furthermore I'd prefer only a change/add of the TLD part, e.g. the Italian version redirects from it.news.yahoo.com to it.notizie.yahoo.com. I'd use it.news.yahoo.com instead of it.notizie.yahoo.com. The first is easier to localize (either there's a positive respond to TLD.news.yahoo.com or not; no need of doing a search) and it looks more convenient to me.

Comment 11

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> 1. BBC
> This site refers to all localizations available:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/languages/
> Please note, that they are ordered after continents, which means e.g. for
> French that this version covers more African than European topics. So the
> French localization should link to the BBC Worldwide Page at news.bbc.co.uk
> rather than www.bbc.co.uk/french.
> Localizations using a localized page, should link to: www.bbc.co.uk/spanish
> instead of the redirected one: news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/
> In case of changes to the BBC News page (they once changed their design which
> made my bookmark useless), the first URL will most likely hit the right page,
> while the second can be subject to change.

I think this adds too much complication given that there's not a clear path for every localizer. Instead, let's have them file a bug to get an exception when there's a better site.

Comment 12

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Attachment: Proposal v3

Version 3: Now with line breaks! Addresses all review comments except #1 from comment 11 for the reason mentioned in comment 12.

Comment 13

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Comment on attachment 309725 [details]
Proposal v3

>Likewise, the “Apple - Downloads‚” URL may be localized to use the most 

You missed that de-comma-ing.

>Tech News
>
>These links should remain unchanged with the exception of Macworld which may 
>be localized per the instructions above.

You missed adding the comma after unchanged.

>Google Maps
>
>The Google Maps link in the Bookmarks menu may be changed to one with the
>closest appropriate tld (e.g., maps.google.it). If an appropriate site does

Capitalize TLD to sync with the rest of the document.

s/one/the site/

>News
>
>In the Bookmark bar, the BBC and Yahoo! News sites may be localized, along 
>with their titles. When localizing Yahoo! News, please link keep “news” in
>the URL rather than localizing it (e.g., use it.news.yahoo.com instead of
>it.notizie.yahoo.com).

s/link keep/keep/

>Search Engines
>
>Camino includes three default search options in its search bar: Google,
>Google Images, and Search this Site. Localizers may not localize these URLs.
>Google auto-detects your language using the settings from System Preferences.
>However, localizers should localize the titles of these options (e.g. Google
>Bilder for German).

Add something like "As with bookmarks, any additions, deletions, or changes to the included serarch engines are governed by the exceptions policy at the top of this document."

You've got a mix of straight and curly quotes; those should be all one or the other when posting the final document.

r=ardissone with all those changes.

Also, please try to use UTF-8 for your plain-text files in the future; Bugzilla (and the patch viewer) really don't like MacRoman.

Comment 14

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

I posted Sam's document with my review comments addressed (minus the quote-fixing, since it's late) at http://wiki.caminobrowser.org/Development:Localization_Policies and will mention it in my forthcoming email about 1.6b3 build.