483289 - [kk] Search engine setup for Firefox 4.0 for Kazakh.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: kk / Kazakh, defect)

Description

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

We want to ship Firefox 3.5 a good list of search engines for Kazakh. 

We're going to work towards this in three phases. First, the localization team and Stas (Stas Malolepszy) will look at the market for the language and come up with a good set of search providers. Timur, we'll need your input on this, the guidelines for making recommendations are on http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_web_services_guidelines. 

For en-US, we currently use this set, to which we can fall back in the case of lacking localized alternatives:
Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers, CC, eBay, Wikipedia

After we decided on a particular search engine, Stas will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. undefined, we'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information.

Once we have a specification on what the searchengines for Kazakh should look like, the localization team and Stas will work on an implementation on that. This should happen by the localization team creating and attaching patches for the desired changes, and requesting review from Stas. After a successful review, the localization team will land them.

Please don't commit any modifications in l10n/kk/browser/searchplugins to the cvs repository without a patch reviewed by Stas, Axel or someone else appointed by Stas or SethB. The data here is sensitive to users and our search partners, thus the extra care here.

Comment 1

[Seth Bindernagel]

Hi Timur:  Any progress here?  We would love to have you participate as a
beta in FF 3.5 beta 4 and will need to provide recommended search plugins for
Kazakh to ensure participation.  Please let us know.  Thanks!

Comment 2

[Seth Bindernagel]

Hi Timur:

Have you had a chance to research any search providers that Kazakh users might prefer in the kk version of Firefox?  We are closing in on the release of FF 3.5 beta 4 and we would like to have kk in that release and work on closing this bug.

Please let us know if you have any questions.  Nothing is off-limits. :)  Thanks!

Comment 3

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Yes, we have discussed this in our mailing list and decided on the following:

1. google.com in English changes to google.com in Kazakh
2. en.wikipedia.com to kk.wikipedia.com
3. amazon to flip.kz (a local Internet bookshop)
4. ebay to agora.kz (a local ebay-like site)
But we have no ideas on the following sites because as I have already mentioned, Kazakhstan has very few useful sites:
1. yahoo.com
2. answers
3. creativecommons

Comment 4

[Seth Bindernagel]

OK, so the final list is beginning to look like this:

General purpose search:
*  Google
*  Yahoo! (Shall we just leave it in?)

Specific interest search:
*  kk.wikipedia.com
*  Creative Commons (Shall we just leave it in?)

e-commerce search:
*  flip.kz
*  agora.kz

We will need to contact the folks at flip.kz and agora.kz.  Do you happen to have contact information for those services?  We can try to find the contact information, but if you are able to find it more easily, please share it with us first.  

Thanks, Timur.  We are getting close.

Comment 5

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Yes, leave CC and Yahoo in for this release. Maybe, we'lll find something better for the upcoming releases.

Contacts for flip.kz are:
8 [phone] - phone
8 [phone] - mobile
[e-mail] - e-mail

Contacts for agora.kz are:
[phone] - phone
[phone] - another phone
[phone] - mobile
[e-mail] - e-mail
http://bb.ct.kz/index.php?showtopic=49389&st=40&gopid=5431956&#entry5431956 - forum

Comment 6

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Thanks Timur. I'll contact flip and agora today.

In other bugs you suggested that we take into consideration a couple of Russian-based services. Following this line of thinking and looking at Alexa's top 100 list for Kazakhstan, I wonder if it would make sense to replace Yahoo by Yandex.ru as the second general search engine. Just thinking out loud. Thoughts?

Comment 7

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Emails to flip.kz and agora.kz sent.

Comment 8

[Timur Timirkhanov]

I got positive answers in Russian from both of the companies.
What is the next step?
Second, maybe, we could changes Yahoo to Yandex searching in Kazakhstan?

Comment 9

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Attachment: [checked in] Patch (google, yandex, wikipedia (kk), CC)

Here's a patch that adds Google, Yandex (as second default), kk.wikipedia and creativecommons. I'm going to land this today to make sure kk has a minimal set of search engines required for beta4. 

We will work on adding agora and flip in the next days, so I leave this bug open.

Comment 10

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Comment on attachment 372855 [details] [diff] [review]
[checked in] Patch (google, yandex, wikipedia (kk), CC)

Landed on 1.9.1: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.1/kk/rev/eb43a4ac85a1

Let's continue to work on Agora and Flip in this bug.

Comment 11

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I got positive answers in Russian from both of the companies.
> What is the next step?

Can you please send these replies to me for archiving purposes? Did they provide any technical details, such as URLs and parameters to use? We will need them to create the plugins.

> Second, maybe, we could changes Yahoo to Yandex searching in Kazakhstan?

Yes, that's a good idea. Can you create a patch and attach it for review in this bug?

Comment 12

[Seth Bindernagel]

Timur, Any updates to Staś's questions in comment #11?

Comment 13

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Hey Timur,

It's been quite a while since the last comment in this bug. However, it looks like we're actually pretty close to marking it as fixed. Would you like to help us with that?

There's only a handful of bugs left that block Kazakh from moving out of beta (the dependencies of bug 483285). Plus, the translation is 100% complete! It would be great if we could move forward on the Kazakh localization. Please let us know how we can help.

Thanks,
-stas

Comment 14

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Timur, Baurzhan, the current state in l10n-central (Firefox 4) is 

google
yandex
creativecommons
wikipedia-kk

For en-US, we dropped creativecommons for Firefox 4, and independently added bing. You may or may not want to follow that?

Also, Agora and Flip seem to be open still (comment 11)

Technically, I see that the bing ordering entry in region.properties was already added. We should probably remove that again, unless we add bing. Not that I recommend in either direction, really depends on whether bing is of value for Kazakh speakers.

Comment 15

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Hey Timur,

Any updates here?

Comment 16

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Not yet, tomorrow.

This is the list of the search engines I'd like to propose:

General purpose search:
*  Google
*  Yandex
*  Kaz.kz (via http://kaz.kz/index_kk.html)

Specific interest search:
*  kk.wikipedia.com
*  maybe, I'll add here lit.kz, but their servers are not responsive for last weeks

e-commerce search:
*  flip.kz
*  agora.kz

Comment 17

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Milos, any comments on Timur's suggestions?

Comment 18

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

(In reply to Timur Timirkhanov from comment #16)
> Not yet, tomorrow.
> 
> This is the list of the search engines I'd like to propose:
> 
> General purpose search:
> *  Google
> *  Yandex
> *  Kaz.kz (via http://kaz.kz/index_kk.html)

What's the difference in search results between Yandex and Kaz.kz? In general, we should have only 2 general purpose search engines: one being the global world wide web search, and other being better for local-language search results.

> Specific interest search:
> *  kk.wikipedia.com
> *  maybe, I'll add here lit.kz, but their servers are not responsive for
> last weeks

Looks good. Since it's been 2 months since your proposal, how's lit.kz doing now?

> 
> e-commerce search:
> *  flip.kz
> *  agora.kz

Those 2 look good.

Thanks, Timur!

Comment 19

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur, ping?

Comment 20

[Timur Timirkhanov]

>What's the difference in search results between Yandex and Kaz.kz? In general, we >should have only 2 general purpose search engines: one being the global world wide >web search, and other being better for local-language search results.

I thought it was necessary because Russian Firefox used to have it as default search. Now after bug 761592 closed, I no logner think it is required.

>Looks good. Since it's been 2 months since your proposal, how's lit.kz doing now?

It is doing well.

Now what are my next steps to add all these cahnges into Firefox?

Comment 21

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

So, let's summarize first:

1. Google
2. Kaz
3. Flip
4. Agora
5. Wikipedia
6. Lit

Is this the list of search engines we want to ship Kazakh Firefox with? If so, we need some administration work before we go on. Namely, we'll need permissions from Kaz, Flip, Agora and Lit that we can use their search services in Kazakh Firefox.

So, please send out an email to all of these(please contact them separately) and wait for the response. Once they all agree(if they do, of course), forward those emails(preferably in English) to me, and ping in this bug. After that, we'll go on with creating open search plugins.

Comment 22

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur,

ping?

Comment 23

[Baurzhan Muftakhidinov]

Milos,
As far as I know, Timur received such confirmations from the owners of kaz.kz and flip.kz.
Lit.kz it seems to be closed at the moment.
And regarding agora.kz, I don't want to make free advertising for it, because of it is purely commercial site, and it is not even popular (judging by its visit counters at the bottom of main page).
So, could we just drop lit.kz and agora.kz from this list?

Comment 24

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Baurzhan,

list.kz currently redirects to kiss.kz.

WRT Agora, I'm fine with either using or not using it, but I'd like to so both you and Timur come up with a list you both agree with.

Can you please coordinate efforts with Timur, and then comment in this bug?

Comment 25

[Baurzhan Muftakhidinov]

Milos,
It was lit.kz not list.kz

We'll decide on agora.kz together with Timur,

Regards

Comment 26

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

(In reply to baurzhan.m from comment #25)
> Milos,
> It was lit.kz not list.kz
> 

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. lit.kz redirects to http://yvi.kz/

Comment 27

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Ok, since after two months and three letters there was no reply from Agora, and Lit is such an unstable project, I suggest that we drop them from the list.

This is the final list for now:

1. Google
2. Kaz
3. Flip
4. Wikipedia

I hope it would not be difficult to make alterations and changes in the future since the Kazakhstan internet is still developing.

I am going to forward you confirmations from perfons resposible for Kaz and Flip in a moment.

What are our next steps?

Comment 28

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur,

as you said, please forward those email letters to me, as the first step. After that, we'll need to have working opensearch plugins for Kaz, Flip and Wikipedia(in Kazakh). For more info on how to code it, refer to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Creating_OpenSearch_plugins_for_Firefox . There's also http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/ru/file/51665b63c6d5/browser/searchplugins/ozonru.xml which may be a good example of a working plugin.

Once you're done creating plugins, please attach a patch here and flag me for a review. Upon positive review, you should commit to aurora/beta, with a commit message describing this bug and my review.

One thing: would you also like to include twitter? There's nothing special to do for adding twitter to the list of search engines, as you should just add it to list.txt file.

Comment 29

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Milos,

I have forwarded the letters.
Kaz.kz provides their own opensearch plugin: kaz.kz/kazsearch_kk.xml. Is it possible to use it?

I don't mind adding twitter as well.

Comment 30

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Attachment: This is a patch to reflect chasnges in search plugins for Kazakh Firefox

Comment 31

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 655912 [details] [diff] [review]
This is a patch to reflect chasnges in search plugins for Kazakh Firefox

Review of attachment 655912 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This looks good in general, I just have a few nits.

Please add license headers to the xml files? 

<!-- This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
   - License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
   - file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/. -->

Also, we should include the images as data uri, http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/cgi/data/data helps when creating that.

::: browser/searchplugins/flip.xml
@@ +2,5 @@
> +<ShortName>flip.kz</ShortName>
> +<LongName>flip.kz көмегімен іздестіру</LongName>
> +<Description>Қазақстандық интернет-дүкенде іздеу</Description>
> +<InputEncoding>utf-8</InputEncoding>
> +<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/png">http://www.flip.kz/favicon.png</Image>

Include the image as a data uri.

@@ +10,5 @@
> +</Url>
> +<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://www.flip.kz/search">
> +  <Param name="search" value="{searchTerms}"/>
> +</Url>
> +<Query role="example" searchTerms="Борис Акунин"/>

We don't need the example here.

::: browser/searchplugins/kaz-kk.xml
@@ +2,5 @@
> +<ShortName>KAZ.KZ</ShortName>
> +<LongName>KAZ.KZ көмегімен іздестіру</LongName>
> +<Description>Қазақстандық іздестіру жүйесі</Description>
> +<InputEncoding>utf-8</InputEncoding>
> +<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">http://kaz.kz/kaz.ico</Image>

Include the image as a data uri.

Comment 32

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Attachment: Patch v. 1.1

Adresses Axel's comments.

Comment 33

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 655940 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v. 1.1

Looks good, thanks. It'd be great if you could still add a newline at the end of the files, that'll silence the warning
\ No newline at end of file
in the diff. That'd be in list.txt, kaz-kk.xml and flip.xml.

Comment 34

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Comment on attachment 655940 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v. 1.1

Review of attachment 655940 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

r-, for one specific reason: there's no <SearchForm> element in kaz-kk.xml, which is a default search page used when someone clicks in the search box and presses Enter(blank search). When you do that on KAZ.KZ, request times out as browser doesn't know which page to request. Please fix that as well as newlines that Axel mentioned in his review.

Also, one tiny thing about wikipedia search plugin: what does "Уикипедияшыларды тез ақпараттандыру мақсатында хабарлама тарату жүйесі құрылды. Осы орайда, өздеріңізден хабарлама тарату тізіміне тіркелуіңізді сұраймыз. Тіркелу"

mean? I tried a online translator I found but I'm still not sure whether we're calling the wrong page(or in a wrong way) or is that something special for Kazakh users.

Comment 35

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Attachment: Patch v. 1.2

Once again adressing Axel's comments.

Comment 36

[Baurzhan Muftakhidinov]

Hi Milos,
I can translate this one for you,
"Уикипедияшыларды тез ақпараттандыру мақсатында хабарлама тарату жүйесі құрылды. Осы орайда, өздеріңізден хабарлама тарату тізіміне тіркелуіңізді сұраймыз. Тіркелу"

means

"Special mail list was created for notifying wikipedia (kazakh) editors. Please consider subscribing to that mail list. Register"

Comment 37

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

(In reply to Timur Timirkhanov from comment #35)
> Created attachment 656403 [details] [diff] [review]
> Patch v. 1.2
> 
> Once again adressing Axel's comments.

Timur, I assume you oversaw comment 34. Please check it and upload a new patch.

(In reply to baurzhan.m from comment #36)
> Hi Milos,
> I can translate this one for you,
> "Уикипедияшыларды тез ақпараттандыру мақсатында хабарлама тарату жүйесі
> құрылды. Осы орайда, өздеріңізден хабарлама тарату тізіміне тіркелуіңізді
> сұраймыз. Тіркелу"
> 
> means
> 
> "Special mail list was created for notifying wikipedia (kazakh) editors.
> Please consider subscribing to that mail list. Register"

Thanks!

Comment 38

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Hi, Milos,

flip.xml also does not have the <SearchForm> element, shall I add it there as well?

Comment 39

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur, yes.

But one more thing, before you prepare the patch: it looks like KAZ.KZ search times out for several days now. Can you please check with them what's happening? We don't really want a search engine that doesn't work.

fwiw, search.kaz.kz times out.

Comment 40

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur,

did you get to check what's happening with their search engine?

Comment 41

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Attachment: Final patch(without KAZ.KZ)

Everything is the same as in previous patch, except for adding line breaks and removing kaz.kz.

For kaz.kz, see Bug 792272.

Comment 42

[Baurzhan Muftakhidinov]

Hi, Milos

kaz.kz worked, so please don't remove it from search engines.

Comment 43

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Comment on attachment 662495 [details] [diff] [review]
Final patch(without KAZ.KZ)

Review of attachment 662495 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Kaz.kz started working

Comment 44

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Attachment: Final patch (with KAZ.KZ)

I think now that kaz.kz started working and its owner wrote a letter explaining the rationale, we can re-add it asap.

Comment 45

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Timur, Baurhzhan,

Indeed, KAZ.KZ started working. 2 nits though:

1) For all the productization patches, please request a review from me
2) Could you please forward that explanatory email to me, if it's in English, or elaborate it, in case it's in Kazakh?

Thanks.

Comment 46

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Milos,

1) is done
2) I am currntly working on translation.

Comment 47

[Milos Dinic [:Milos]]

Comment on attachment 662816 [details] [diff] [review]
Final patch (with KAZ.KZ)

This looks good, r+. Please wait for Axel's feedback, and once you get a + there, land this patch with appropriate commit message(mentioning this bug id and title, along with my review - ie. r=milos).

Thanks!

Comment 48

[Timur Timirkhanov]

Checked in
central http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/kk/rev/94e42951caef
aurora http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/kk/rev/ebe143a25a12
beta http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-beta/kk/rev/18abe020f634