GNUnify09

Arun and I spent the past two days at the GNUnify conference in Pune, India.  This conference was especially important for me because it was the first time I was able to meet all of our Indian localizers.  We had a great dinner at a local restaurant and I got to know many of them on a more personal level and that was great.  Thanks to Krishna (Telugu), Shankar (Kannada), Sandeep (Marathi), Ahmed (Assamese), and Manoj (Oriya) for coming to the dinner.  Ani (Malayalam), Ankit (Gujurati), Runa (Bengali), and Rajesh (Hindi) couldn’t make it due to prior obligations.  We chatted a lot about localizing Mozilla and all its challenges.  Dinner was straight after Arun and I presented our web standards/evangelism/localization routine at GNUnify.  If I could sum up the remarks from the day/evening, this is what I captured:

1. The localizers may not face the same complexity of plural forms that we see in other languages in other regions.  But, they are craving *more* transparency and clarity for our process.  It’s my belief that we have made it very clear just what needs to be done to get a localization official.  So, it might require me to do a summary email or reblog post to highlight a few places to look when wondering what checklist exists for localizing.
2. Again and again, I heard people asking me what Mozilla is going to do to get content localized on the Web.  A common remark I heard was that it’s very nice to have the browser chrome and UI translated into so many languages, but what are we going to do for translation of content on the web.  Frankly, I am not sure what stance Mozilla should take here.  I can see the obvious point that a translated browser is a good step, but what good is it if all the content on the Web is in English.  But, I also know that we are developing client application software in addition to fighting for standards on the Web.  My first thought is to keep a close watch to see where we can enter to help promote a healthier Web that includes content for everyone. One response that I provided to a lot of people is that we do our best to work with localizers to find the best local content that exists on the web that we then feature on our “Getting Started” page.
3. Fonts are an issue in India and some of the creators of most highly used fonts have only designed them to work on IE.  Arun took particular passion in this field and we plan to follow up with a few folks to start the evangelism on making fonts work on the Web, regardless of a users browser.
4. Web developers we met found Arun’s presentations and demos terrific and we seemed to gather a lot of questions about SVG, OGG and theora.
5. HTML5 is a hot topic with a lot of curiosity.  A lot of excellent questions arose about the specs of HTML5.  Arun did a really nice job illustrating canvas and video tags with relevant examples demoed in Firefox 3.1.

It’s my opinion that we had a really successful trip through India.  Our localizers are a close team who are dedicated to helping Mozilla.  Our campus reps program is taking off and everywhere we went we met at least two or three new reps.  Web developers we met had a sincere interest in the open Web and Arun made lots of friends with that topic.  Without question, there is a lot of interest in the Mozilla here and I think we’ll benefit by offering continued support and helping those inspired Indians to become the leaders of the large, diverse, and complex community.

I am now leaving India and “stopping through” Beijing to see Li Gong and meet the localizers and community there for the first time.