[Kindle Touch] Localization

[ixtab]

just a short reply: this *may* all be caused by translating *too much* (see the updated very first post in this thread). I have experienced crashes caused by incorrect translation of "north","east" etc. strings for de locale as well. It's definitely not a good idea to localize parts which were not meant for localization. The trick is to find out what the "do not translate" policy actually applies to ;-)

However, the one thing that is really curious is that ru_RU worked for me without a problem. I admit I only tried pressing menu and going back to settings->international, but that *did* work.

[ixtab]

In the last 6 hours, I have updated the german translation on transifex. The "locale" (=blanket) and "framework" (=java) parts are now both at 100%, and should be internally consistent. I have tested this locale, and it works perfectly on my device. This means two (well, three) things:

• I have not thoroughly tested every single aspect of the device, but the main and settings booklets, as well as reading books (.mobi and .pdf) works, with everything localized. I cannot test periodicals, blogs, and all the other fancy features like borrowing/lending etc, quite simply because I don't use them. Any feedback as to whether these work or not is appreciated.
• most importantly, this should give other translators experiencing problems with their own locale some hints as to where they may have gone wrong. All relevant translations are checked in on transifex, so you may want to check for resources/strings which were not changed between en_US and de. (a relatively simple grep should do, but I'm too tired to figure out the exact syntax). Except for possible mistakes on my part, these are the resources that you probably also don't want to change in your locales.

(UPDATE: See a few posts down for a snapshot containing *all* locales)

[ixtab]

... so, just another hint, or thought, or whatever. I have tried again to completely wipe the russian locale, then installed it via a .bin archive.

The basic installation looks normal (i.e. I get NO white screen on reboot, but the standard, "podoshtiytes poshaluysta..." screen while rebooting.) Afterwards, the home screen looks normal as well.



What I can confirm is the crash when selecting "Archived Items", for example. But this is most probably caused by "over-localized" locales, as previously pointed out.

I'm still intrigued why you folks get a white blanket screen. This shouldn't be happening, and I can't reproduce it here. ... any clues?

[eureka]

Originally Posted by ixtab

I'm still intrigued why you folks get a white blanket screen. This shouldn't be happening, and I can't reproduce it here. ... any clues?

No. I can't reproduce white blanket screen either. Did you read "blank white" as "blanket white"?

BTW, tip about USB charging screen.

I've also got almost blank USB charging screen (after installing of ru_RU localization bundle). There was no text, just an USB plug image.

It is just a translator's error (or laziness, or something non-understandable). Strings in blanket.po with ids usb.screen.header, usb.screen.message, usb.screen.message_nc are left empty. But they should contain appropriate messages.

Also, Kindle's locale must be set to ru_RU.UTF-8. Not just ru.UTF-8. I.e. /var/local/system/locale should contain:

LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8

After a downloading of blanket.po for Russian language, adding of missing messages, compiling to .mo and copying compiled blanket.mo to Kindle at /usr/share/locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES, I am seeing localized Russian text at USB charging screen.

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by eureka

No. I can't reproduce white blanket screen either. Did you read "blank white" as "blanket white"?

well, possibly :-)
I was assuming white meant "white", wherever it comes from...

BTW, tip about USB charging screen.

Originally Posted by eureka

I've also got almost blank USB charging screen (after installing of ru_RU localization bundle). There was no text, just an USB plug image.
It is just a translator's error (or laziness, or something non-understandable). Strings in blanket.po with ids usb.screen.header, usb.screen.message, usb.screen.message_nc are left empty. But they should contain appropriate messages.

Yes, in *this* particular case that's true. For ru_RU, the gettext messages are indeed empty, so this is expected. However, for (almost all) other locales I tested, they are *not* empty, yet I *still* get an "empty" screen (no text). (For example, "pl" locale). Could you test the pl locale on your device and report back, please?

Originally Posted by eureka

Also, Kindle's locale must be set to ru_RU.UTF-8. Not just ru.UTF-8. I.e. /var/local/system/locale should contain:

LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8

After a downloading of blanket.po for Russian language, adding of missing messages, compiling to .mo and copying compiled blanket.mo to Kindle at /usr/share/locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES, I am seeing localized Russian text at USB charging screen.

[/QUOTE]

Hmmm... after only installing the ru_RU install package (and doing nothing else), my Kindle gives:

[root@kindle root]# cat /var/local/system/locale 
LANG=ru_RU.utf8
LC_ALL=ru_RU.utf8

Is this different for you? (I'm expecting "ru_RU.UTF-8" to be the result of the update, not "ru.UTF-8")

[eureka]

Originally Posted by ixtab

For ru_RU, the gettext messages are indeed empty, so this is expected. However, for (almost all) other locales I tested, they are *not* empty, yet I *still* get an "empty" screen (no text). (For example, "pl" locale). Could you test the pl locale on your device and report back, please?

Yes, I'm observing [almost] empty USB charging screen on pl_PL.UTF-8 locale after installing of pl localization bundle.

It looks like creating of sub-directory at /usr/share/locale and setting of appropriate environment variables (by filling of /var/local/system/locale) aren't enough for using localized messages. The locale by itself must be introduced. Known locales are contained at /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive. On my KT, I am seeing there strings en_US.utf8, de_DE.utf8, ru_RU.utf8 and some others, but there is no pl_PL.utf8. Locale could be added to locale archive by localedef utility (which is available on KT), but I didn't investigate further...

..oh, output of strings /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive | grep utf8 and localedef --list-archive is identical. Just a note.

Originally Posted by ixtab

Hmmm... after only installing the ru_RU install package (and doing nothing else), my Kindle gives:

[root@kindle root]# cat /var/local/system/locale 
LANG=ru_RU.utf8
LC_ALL=ru_RU.utf8

Is this different for you? (I'm expecting "ru_RU.UTF-8" to be the result of the update, not "ru.UTF-8")

There is no automatic change of locale after installing of localization bundle (I understand that it's not a bug). I've changed locale manually, with editing of /var/local/system/locale, and firstly set it as ru.UTF-8 (because there is /usr/share/locale/ru directory). It didn't worked. So I've made a note about it, just for sharing of experience.

[ixtab]

Thanks a ton for pointing this out! This was indeed the problem. I have now built in automatic localedef commands in the installer and uninstaller. A snapshot of all locales (translation state as of 10 minutes ago) is available here: (update: file removed ecause these used a rather dangerous way to update the system locales; see below) -- blanket now seems to work correctly for all locales!

There have been a few bugfixes in the tool; the current version is checked in. If you want to update to the newest version (in particular those of you who use the appliance:

cd kindle-touch-l10n
git pull
cd ~

[JustAMan]

I'll be able to test stuff in an hour when I'll get back home.
I can test all locales if need be.

ixtab,
Do you think I'd better reproduce the "white home page" error with old bundle first or go test new bundle straight away?
The error I had was on Kindle 5.0.0 (more details via PM if needed).

eureka,
No problem, man, just let me know if you need some tech help
BTW, when we discovered that Kindle tool cannot extract homebrew updates (I think this might be related to certificate or whatever... didn't investigate, though), would you mind sharing kbd sources so kbd can be tweaked?

[ixtab]

forget about the old bundles, they are buggy anyway ;-)

So yes, just try it with the new ones. Also please try out the polish one to see if USB mode display works correctly. Of course, you're free to try out others as well

For me, all locales I tested worked correctly -- at least the home and settings screens, and blanket stuff (startup/shutdown/USB display). ru_RU still crashes on accessing the archive...

[eureka]

@ixtab, thanks.

localedef --add-to-archive changes Amazon-provided file. This is not so good. It could prevents future updating to new original firmware. Instead, directory with locale definition could just be copied to /usr/lib/locale. It works.

It will be also good to add appropriate locale definitions, not the copy of en_US.utf8. I've tried to copy ru_RU locale definition file and UTF-8 character map (both from glibc Git repo: see locales and charmaps) to KT and compile them there with

localedef -f charmap_file -i locale_file --no-archive /tmp/ru_RU.utf8

It required also to download a lot of additional locale definitions, which ru_RU inherites from, but in the end successfully produced directory /tmp/ru_RU.utf8 with compiled locale definition.

[ixtab]

Hmm... yes, then it may be better to create directories instead.

You're probably also right about providing "correct" definitions, but this will be a hell of a lot of work, and I honestly don't see the point in it. It's not like users will need a localized root shell But feel free to convince me of the opposite.

[ixtab]

Ha, much simpler alternative.

[root@kindle locale]# ls -la
drwxrwxr-x    3 root     root          1024 Jan 24 17:03 .
drwxr-xr-x   27 root     root         16384 Nov 10 09:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          1024 Jan 24 17:02 en_US.utf8
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       8318256 Jan 24 17:02 locale-archive
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            26 Jan 24 17:03 th_TH.utf8 -> /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8

This is easy to implement (en_US.utf8 would go into locale-base), and will keep localization files small. And it works

Also don't forget that space on the device is rather limited. I don't like the idea of having > 1 MB of locale stuff which concerns only the console, per language.

UPDATE: Ah what the heck, I just did it. The very first post has been updated with a link to the new locales snapshot. NOTE: You have to install version 2 of the locale-base for these packages to work (also linked in first post).

If you're using some of the locales from the first snapshot today, make sure to uninstall them with the *old* uninstaller, then install the new version.

[JustAMan]

ixtab,
Hmm, tried ru_RU from latest bundle you've provided... (before your very last post)
Still got white home screen (attached screenshot, slightly edited to mask my device name ).

Then invoked international menu from ssh-over-usb, selected English back and got "error while updating: error 3" after reboot, then it rebooted again and was in English.

German localization works fine (I don't understand German but I see that home Menu is translated and some other locations are translated, too).

BTW, when scanning showlog output for some clues I saw a lot of errors like

E lipc:dbuserr:name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown:Receive Dbus error message (DBUS_MESSAGE_TYPE_ERROR): The name com.lab126.wan was not provided by any .service files

And I tend to think this is the source of my problem.
Some parts of logs also attached (stripped off the part that was before I installed ru_RU locale).
ru-install.txt
ru-select.txt

P.S. I think there's a need to invent ways to provide ability to localize Yifan's Launcher menus, too

P.P.S. Just came to my mind... I don't install anything except locale .bin update, I invoke "International" menu via "lipc-set-proc" method (wrote my extension for the Launcher).

[ixtab]

You can ignore the com.lab126.wan thing. I'm also constantly getting it (probably because the device doesn't have 3G).

I have to admit I'm totally clueless, and probably can't be of much help because I can't reproduce this. Unfortunately, the logs aren't terribly helpful either... Maybe eureka can look into this, if he's having the same issue.

For the launcher, you can easily localize the launcher itself, but not the individual items. They are plain text strings in files...

[JustAMan]

Originally Posted by ixtab

For the launcher, you can easily localize the launcher itself, but not the individual items. They are plain text strings in files...

I know, I've written two JSON extensions already and planning to look into Java...

What I thought of was combine yours efforts with Yifan to provide some mechanism for items to localize themselves... At least, say, a way to specify menus in config.xml to be shown on specific languages.

P.S. Read my addition to my previous post, it occurred that I edited it after you replied
P.P.S. There're a lot of errors in DBUS that don't concert wan, too... that's what bugging me.