10.29.09
Posted in Camino, Open Source at 2:17 am by Smokey
Taking another break from working on tasks for the Camino 2 release, I wanted to write a little bit about our amazing team of localizers tonight. As if someone was reading my mind, Christopher Henderson showed us this tweet he came across tonight.
Camino 2 is likely going to ship in English and 13 other languages (attentive readers will note that this is down by two from the number of languages in Camino 1.6.10, but still three more than shipped in the initial Camino 1.6 release), all translated by our volunteer localizers from the caminol10n project. New to Camino 2 will be Danish (which last appeared in the Camino 1.0 series) and Turkish, making its debut as a Camino localization.
The story of Danish in Camino 2 is particularly worth telling. At the end of September, about two weeks after we released Camino 2.0 Beta 4, Danish Camino user Allan Nyholm Nielsen posted a message in the Camino discussion forum asking why Camino 1.6 was localized in Swedish and Norwegian but not Danish, and whether Camino 2 would include a Danish translation. A member of the Camino development team replied that our localizations are all produced by volunteers and that while there had been a Danish localization in Camino 1.0.x and some work had been done for Camino 1.5, the leader of that team disappeared and the translation for 1.5 was never finished. We also pointed Allan to the caminol10n project (and to another Danish Camino user on the forum, David Munch, who could possibly help) and urged him to think about reviving the Danish translation.
The very next day, Allan had posted to the caminol10n mailing list (and back in the Camino discussion forum) stating that he had signed up and had gotten started. Two weeks after that, Allan posted a message stating that he had essentially completed the translation of Camino 2 into Danish, and, after a week of polishing the translation, he reported he had the complete translation ready.
In three weeks, we went from having no Danish translation and only an interested user who had never done any Mac OS X application localization to having a complete, peer-reviewed Danish localization for Camino 2.0! Congratulations to Allan and David on this achievement.
If you would like to see Camino in your language, you too can make it a reality. While not every language has a localization of an older version of Camino available to jump-start the process (there are a dozen languages that have shipped in past Camino versions that will not be in Camino 2.0, however), and while some teams take longer to complete a translation than others, you can still get started today and perhaps be ready to include your language in Camino 2.0.1 or 2.0.2. There are a few, relatively simple, specialized tools to learn, but for the most part all you need to know is English and your own language. There might even be other speakers of your language already interested in helping, and the existing Camino translators are knowledgeable and can help you get started with the tools.
The Danish experience is not an isolated case, either; during the Camino 1.6.x series, we added three new languages, and one of them was complete in a matter of weeks (one took a month or so, and the third we learned about only when it was already complete).
If your language is already included in Camino, be sure to thank the members of your language’s translation team and ask them if there is any way you can help; existing teams are usually looking for new members, too, to help spread the workload.
Finally, it is with sadness that I report that Catalan, Czech, Polish, and Portuguese (pt-BR) will be missing from Camino 2.0, so if you are a Camino user who speaks one of those languages, now is the time for you to get involved. Register with the caminol10n project, join the mailing list, and bring your language back to Camino.
Permalink
10.27.09
Posted in Camino, Life at 3:34 am by Smokey
Just a very brief post here tonight, to come up for air and to mark an occasion; I have a large backlog of things to write about in the near future, and also a lot more work to do.
I realized tonight that in the year that I have been handling the “build” side of Camino’s build and release process (at first sharing duties with the illustrious Mark Mentovai, and then on my own), I’ve produced builds for a bunch of releases: five Camino 2 milestones and five Camino 1.6.x security and stability releases (with at least one respin in the mix). However, I had never been responsible for the build process for a major release, for the new version that’s all shiny, the culmination of the entire team’s hard work, and the build that’s tested and reviewed by the world. Since 2006 (and Camino 1.0), Mark had always handled that. Tonight, though, I felt the weight of tagging on my shoulders.
Which is a long, rambling, nostalgic way of saying that we now have a Camino 2 release candidate (note to the press and other interested parties: release candidate; Camino 2 is not out yet) for our community to hammer on, with special thanks to Stuart Morgan for fixing a dozen or so of our blockers and wanted/pseudo-blockers in the past two weeks and to Mark for the ninetieth-minute superreview on the very last patch.
I’ll have more to say about Camino 2 in the coming days, and the release will be here before you know it, but for now I’m just going to mark this milestone, point everyone to the usual places, take off my build engineer’s cap, and go to sleep.
Permalink
10.08.09
Posted in Camino, Software at 4:25 pm by Smokey
Today’s Camino 2 nightly builds enable tabs by default; that is, ⌘-clicking a link now opens that link in a new tab rather than a new window. After all, we’ve been adding all sorts of new tab-related features since Camino 1.0 (and especially over the past few releases)—more tabs per window, better overflow tab management, the ability to redirect links that want to open new windows into new tabs (“single-window mode”), better AppleScript access to tabs, a scrolling tab bar, the ability to rearrange tabs by drag and drop, and tab overview (“Tabsposé”)—so with all this development focus, it was high time that tabbed browsing became the default browsing mode in Camino.1
Moreover, as many other browsers have adopted tabbed browsing as the default mode of operation, users expect it to “just work” and potential switchers are sometimes confused by the fact that they have to open Preferences to allow ⌘-clicks to create new tabs. Users who prefer that ⌘-click open links in new windows are no doubt going to be a bit disappointed, but we believe this change benefits the majority of our users and potential users. If you’re strictly a window user, please give the new setting a try for a little bit; your may find your feelings have changed as tabbed browsing has become more powerful (I can still remember years ago swearing I’d never use tabs, but here I am [ab]using them). However, if tabs still aren’t for you, it’s easy to disable this setting by opening the Tabs pane of Camino’s Preferences and unchecking “Links opened with ⌘-click.”
As a brief house-keeping note, you may have noticed a lack of regular Camino development updates here over the past couple of months; August was an extraordinarily busy month for me, and September was occupied by the release process for Camino 2.0 Beta 4 and Camino 1.6.10. Fear not, however; Camino development has continued to make great progress, and we’re in the final stretch to Camino 2! I can’t promise when I’ll be able to return to regular posting of updates, but rest assured we are working steadily—and in the meantime, join us in having a Happy Tabs Day!
1 Amazingly, Camino isn’t the last Mac browser to default to ⌘-click opening links in new tabs; of the long-standing Mac browsers, both iCab and SeaMonkey still default to ⌘-click opening new windows. ↩
Permalink