Closed Bug 522004 Opened 15 years ago Closed 11 years ago

[pt-PT] Choose search plug-ins for Fennec in Portuguese

Categories

(Mozilla Localizations :: pt-PT / Portuguese, defect)

Product:
Mozilla Localizations
Component:
pt-PT / Portuguese
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: stas, Assigned: joao.neves)

References

Details

(Keywords: productization, Whiteboard: [bootstrapped])

Attachments

(1 file)

Bootstrapping search engines with Google and localized Wikipedia
9.26 KB, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review 
You've indicated an interest in participating in the localization of mobile Firefox (aka Fennec). We want to ship Fennec with a good list of search engines for Portuguese. As the technical details of implementation are being worked on, we'd like to start the discussion about the choice of search engines. This bug is about agreeing on a set of search engines, and will not tackle the implementation (at least not yet).

First, the localization team and Staś will look at the market for the locale and come up with a good set of search providers. The guidelines for making recommendations are on https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Mobile/Productization. You're welcome to suggest engines already shipped in desktop Firefox for Portuguese, if they fit well in the categories outlined on the wiki.

For en-US, we currently use the following set, which may serve as an inspiration:
Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter.

Note that according to the guidelines, for some categories it may be better to leave them empty than to ship with en engine that's irrelevant or unavailable in your region.

After we decided on a particular search engine, we will need to test it in Fennec. You can test on a mobile device and on the desktop (download the builds from <http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/>). Staś will help with testing on a device, too. If the service works fine, Staś will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. We'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information if we don't have them already.

We don't know the implementation details yet, so for now, please don't create patches nor land anything. We will keep you posted as we figure out the how's and when's.

Thanks.
I'd like to keep the standard list for pt-PT, assuming I can't take Yahoo out:

Google
Yahoo
Amazon.co.uk
Priberam
Sapo
Wikipedia (PT)
João: we can remove Yahoo if we think it's not a good choice for our Portuguese users. In fact, I'd be in favor of doing that if we can reduce the number of search engines in Fennec this way.

Would you mind providing short descriptions of the engines that you have suggested? What category do they belong to?

Any suggestions on social search? Is Twitter popular in Portugal?
Here's a patch resetting the mobile/searchplugins/ directory to a minimal set of search engines that we would like to ship your locale with. Please read this comment carefully before you land this patch.

*Important*: There has been a change to how we use the  <Description/> elements present in the plug-ins (see bug 528655 and bug 529869). We want to emphasize that the search is integrated with the browser to better reflect what a search plugin is and what it does. You will need to edit the Wikipedia plug-in before you commit this patch. Please read <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions> for detailed instructions.

For Google, we don't have to copy the XML file to your mobile/searchplugins/ directory. Plugins identical to en-US are pulled from source automatically. It's enough to put the engine's name in list.txt for this to work (which I did). I also updated the Wikipedia plug-in to use a bigger icon, see bug 517997 for details.

Please edit the Wikipedia plug-in and commit this patch before you opt-in in the mozilla.dev.l10n newsgroup. Opt-ins without this patch will not be taken. This does not mean that we don't want to include other search engines. On the contrary, the work and the discussion will continue in this bug until we choose a good set of search engines for your locale. Then, you will be able to opt in again, so that in the final release we include more search engines than the mineral set from this patch.

This patch is simply meant to reset your mobile/searchplugins directory so that we keep the repository clean and happy.

Thanks for understanding!
Guys, I see that something has landed, but it's broken and is not the patch I attached here. You won't be able to opt in unless the bootstrapping patch from comment 3 has landed.

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/c24bad321c3d/mobile/searchplugins/list.txt is broken (lines are broken where they shouldn't be), and the list of engines has not been approved.

Please back this out and land the patch from comment 3 which includes google and pt.wikipedia.

We will then work on Amazon.co.uk, Priberam and Sapo (but for post-1.0 probably).

Thanks!
Committed in changeset b6677ee86ffc.

Is everything ok, now?
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
(In reply to comment #5)
> Committed in changeset b6677ee86ffc.
> 
> Is everything ok, now?

Thanks João, it's definitely better now ;)

Can you please fix two more things:

1. handle the description line in <http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/b6677ee86ffc/mobile/searchplugins/wikipedia-ptpt.xml#l3> following instructions available at <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions#Wikipedia_plug-in>.

2. remove files that we're not using right now from <http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/tip/mobile/searchplugins>, i.e. priberam.xml, sapo.xml, wikipedia-pt.xml and yahoo-br.xml.

This doesn't mean we can't include these engines in pt-PT, of course. I just want to first have a discussion about this, before we land anything. Thanks for understanding.
João, in comment 1 you suggested:

Yahoo (general search)
Amazon.co.uk (e-commerce)
Priberam (dictionary)
Sapo (general?)

I wonder if we need so many general search engines. We already ship with Google and due to very limited space in Fennec's UI, we might want to consider leaving it as the only general search engine in pt-PT.

Let's compare this to the 5 recommended categories of search engines for Fennec: general, reference, e-commerce, local and social.

* Google (general search)
* Wikipedia (pt) (reference)
* Amazon.co.uk (e-commerce)
* ? (local search)
* ? (social search)

If we don't find any local or social search engine suitable for pt-PT, we can replace one of these categories with the specific interest category, and go for Priberam.

* Priberam (specific interest)

In any case, I would like to stick to the limit of max. 5 engines.

What do you think?
Changes in comment #6 was commited in: 38b8fe69e88a

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > Committed in changeset b6677ee86ffc.
> > 
> > Is everything ok, now?
> 
> Thanks João, it's definitely better now ;)
> 
> Can you please fix two more things:
> 
> 1. handle the description line in
> <http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/b6677ee86ffc/mobile/searchplugins/wikipedia-ptpt.xml#l3>
> following instructions available at
> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Integrated_Search_Instructions#Wikipedia_plug-in>.
> 
> 2. remove files that we're not using right now from
> <http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/tip/mobile/searchplugins>,
> i.e. priberam.xml, sapo.xml, wikipedia-pt.xml and yahoo-br.xml.
> 
> This doesn't mean we can't include these engines in pt-PT, of course. I just
> want to first have a discussion about this, before we land anything. Thanks for
> understanding.
(In reply to comment #8)
> Changes in comment #6 was commited in: 38b8fe69e88a

Thanks. Just one more minor nit:

in http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/rev/38b8fe69e88a#l4.7, if you've decided to leave the description line in the plugin, please change the translation to something like "Integrated search on Wikipedia".
Sapo is local search.

Priberam is something nice to have because a dictionary is very useful in a mobile environment.

For social, facebook has around 1 million users in Portugal (that's about 20% of the internet users). That would be my first bet, if possible. Is there any kind of search for facebook?
Committed in 0dfcd9d607bf.

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Changes in comment #6 was commited in: 38b8fe69e88a
> 
> Thanks. Just one more minor nit:
> 
> in
> http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/rev/38b8fe69e88a#l4.7,
> if you've decided to leave the description line in the plugin, please change
> the translation to something like "Integrated search on Wikipedia".
(In reply to comment #11)
> Committed in 0dfcd9d607bf.

Thanks!
Whiteboard: [bootstrapped]
(In reply to comment #10)
> Sapo is local search.

I meant local as in "around-me" search, e.g. "pizza near my location". Is there anything like this in Portugal?

> Priberam is something nice to have because a dictionary is very useful in a
> mobile environment.

Agreed.
 
> For social, facebook has around 1 million users in Portugal (that's about 20%
> of the internet users). That would be my first bet, if possible. Is there any
> kind of search for facebook?

There is, but you need to be logged in, which I don't really like about it :(
Then for social twitter it is.

Sapo does local search as you say - can you provide me an example so I can adapt the plugin?
My doubt is how to pass the coordinates to the search engine.
I don't think that this is currently possible.  There is, theoretically, the Geo extension to the Open Search spec <http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/Extensions/Geo/1.0/Draft_1> but it's not implemented in Firefox.  There's a lot of UX questions that make it non trivial--the call to the geolocation API is asynchronous, so you can't just put the coordinates in the URL right away, like the spec suggests:

> http://example.com/?q={searchTerms}&pw={startPage?}&lat={geo:lat?}&lon={geo:lon?}&r={geo:radius?}&format=rss

I think that the acceptable alternative is a search engine that asks for an address, and perform the search near it.  It's not optimal, but could work.  Does Sapo offer anything like this?
They have apps, but I don't think they have the specific web interaction you're proposing. I'll make sure with them and get back to you. Is there any such implementation in any language that they can look at?
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.2/pt-PT/file/default/mobile/searchplugins looks OK, but that apparently never made it to central or beyond.

I'll be blocking sign-offs on this bug for now.

Can you please attach a patch and request review from Milos for aurora's mobile/searchplugins?
Blocks: 766684
Sorry for the lag in replying.

We're now actually running into having to respin for pt-PT for fennec 14, so I'll go ahead and land a fix for the searchplugins on beta and aurora. Sorry for jumping in on this, hoping to help still in the endgame.

More comments as I trot along.
I've landed http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-beta/pt-PT/rev/d55017655460 and http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/pt-PT/rev/bda797d0c910.

I've filed bug 766733 to get a nightly respun on aurora, it'd be great if you could give that build some testing.

I'd love to see a sign-off on fennec14 or a call on your side that it's not good to go. That'd be great to get in time for a respin tomorrow afternoon our time, so that we can kick builds off in the PDT morning time.
The build to test would be the multi-locale build in http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/2012/06/2012-06-20-14-55-14-mozilla-aurora-android/.

Thanks again, and sorry for the sudden urgency of things.

I guess we didn't publish that in the l10n newsgroup, but the 14 release is not going on the rapid schedule, but on a quicker one. We'll have a 14.0.1 mobile in sync with 14.0 on desktop on the regular schedule, though. We'd really like pt-PT in the early release, though.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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