900651 - Support Chrome i18n JSON format

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Paul Ellenbogen [:pellenbogen]]

Chrome currently uses a JSON format (http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/i18n.html) for i18n, while Jetpack uses the .properties format to store translations. This makes i18n & l10n a little more difficult for addons that want to support both browsers. Supporting l10n in both browsers requires keeping two different sets of the the same translations, or a build system that converts a canonical copy of the translations to each format.

Allowing Jetpack to read Chrome JSON format would ease the process of cross browser addon development.

Comment 1

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

I would never want to *replace* .properties file support with this format, but it might be interesting to support both - in particular if we consider helping cross-browser extensions developers important.

Comment 2

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

Patches welcome if you're interesting in working on this. For help getting started drop by #jetpack on irc.mozilla.org

Comment 3

[Paul Ellenbogen [:pellenbogen]]

(In reply to Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) from comment #2)
> Patches welcome if you're interesting in working on this. For help getting
> started drop by #jetpack on irc.mozilla.org

In retrospect, another interface like this might not be worth the dev time to create and maintain. Perhaps I will create an independent conversion tool that a build system can use to convert formats. This way each browser SDK only has to support one format. If I do, I will post it here or in the community modules github page: https://github.com/mozilla/addon-sdk/wiki/Community-developed-modules