A possible future for LO help/lang packs?

l10n
#1

Hi,
just thinking loud (hope it is not too loud): is it possible to* make help
packs into extensions* (oxt files)? Could this also be done with the
lang-packs?

The benefits:
- *smaller file size*: extensions are great, because they are not
executables and all the execution/installation code already lies within
LO/OOo;
- *lower cost of building/hosting*: a help pack would need to be built just
once for all supported (and unsupported) operating systems;
- *user-friendly*: a help pack can be dropped onto Extension Manager,
double-clicked etc. It can also be downloaded at the last phase of the
installation process with an installer on Windows and Linux etc. (an
installer downloading and running another installer seems not so nice).
- *localizer-friendly*: maybe Pootle server could be extended to generate
helppacks (langpacks) daily/weekly or by demand - for testing purposes as
well as for the release purposes;

The drawbacks:
- the extension framework maybe needs to be extended a bit to support help
installation via extensions (but if needed at all that seems a reasonable
investment to me, not knowing how much work that would present :slight_smile: );

Lp, m.

#2

Hi,

Von: Martin Srebotnjak <miles@filmsi.net>
An: l10n@libreoffice.org

just thinking loud (hope it is not too loud): is it possible to* make
help packs into extensions* (oxt files)?

I tried this briefly for one of the LibO beta versions. In theory
the mechanism is there but in reality I ended up with a mix of
English and German help. Maybe this could be fixed, but the no-go
for me was that the activation of the extension took about half an hour
(on a Windows7 DualCore AMD PC).

...

The drawbacks:
- the extension framework maybe needs to be extended a bit to support help

It does already, but currently it builds index files on installing /
activating the extension what takes a lot of time. I have no idea
if we could "prebuild" the index and put this into the extension.

Regards,

André

#3

Hi Martin,

2011.02.07 13:37, Martin Srebotnjak rašė:

Hi,
just thinking loud (hope it is not too loud): is it possible to* make help
packs into extensions* (oxt files)? Could this also be done with the
lang-packs?

The benefits:
- *smaller file size*: extensions are great, because they are not
executables and all the execution/installation code already lies within
LO/OOo;
- *lower cost of building/hosting*: a help pack would need to be built just
once for all supported (and unsupported) operating systems;
- *user-friendly*: a help pack can be dropped onto Extension Manager,
double-clicked etc. It can also be downloaded at the last phase of the
installation process with an installer on Windows and Linux etc. (an
installer downloading and running another installer seems not so nice).
- *localizer-friendly*: maybe Pootle server could be extended to generate
helppacks (langpacks) daily/weekly or by demand - for testing purposes as
well as for the release purposes;

The drawbacks:
- the extension framework maybe needs to be extended a bit to support help
installation via extensions (but if needed at all that seems a reasonable
investment to me, not knowing how much work that would present :slight_smile: );

I think that it's a VERY VERY VERY good idea. :wink:

Rimas

#4

Note that we don't want the situation were all UI languages are equal, but one UI language is more equal than the others.

--tml

#5

> Von: Martin Srebotnjak <miles@filmsi.net>

..

> just thinking loud (hope it is not too loud): is it possible to* make
> help packs into extensions* (oxt files)?

  Sounds (to me) like a really good idea :slight_smile: May not work well for Linux
- where you want the help installed in the system, but that is different
enough anyway.

I tried this briefly for one of the LibO beta versions. In theory
the mechanism is there but in reality I ended up with a mix of
English and German help. Maybe this could be fixed, but the no-go
for me was that the activation of the extension took about half an hour
(on a Windows7 DualCore AMD PC).

  Lol :slight_smile: that does sound deadly silly.

It does already, but currently it builds index files on installing /
activating the extension what takes a lot of time. I have no idea
if we could "prebuild" the index and put this into the extension.

  Oh - we can certainly special case / disable that for our extensions
that already come with a pre-built help index. Better, we should speed
up the indexing with clucene; but that is all quite do-able. It would
help to have a stack trace of quite how the slowness gets called in that
case though (if that is possible to get on Windows).

  Martin - is that something you might be interested in working on ?
and/or if not - could you add it as an easy hack - which will need some
research doing on it to make it easy [ samples of other code that packs
extensions, thoughts on solving path problems on Mac vs. Windows etc. ].

  ATB,

    Michael.

#6

In data lunedì 07 febbraio 2011 12:47:02, Tor Lillqvist ha scritto:

Note that we don't want the situation were all UI languages are equal, but
one UI language is more equal than the others.

--tml

I agree with Tor.

+1