Globalization test days report for Fedora 23

What is globalization?

In software, globalization means two ways to make software useful globally: internationalization and localization. Because technical folks don’t enjoy typing long words, these are often abbreviated. Respectively we refer to them as G11n, I18n, and L10n. (The numbers refer to how many letters have been dropped!)

  • I18n is making software capable of supporting global users.
  • L10n is making translations for the text that appears in software.

So globalization ensures all users can use software, regardless of language. There’s a recent proposal in Fedora to unify our globalization work. This brings benefits for all users, by tying together I18n and L10n efforts for better results.

Test days for Fedora 23

Each Fedora release, developers add interesting features and changes. The Fedora QA group puts in extra effort to make sure these features work well. The Fedora QA group runs test days, together with our development teams. Test days usually happen between Alpha and Beta test releases. These events are essential to help us find critical flaws. 

The Globalization team organized two test days for Fedora 23 with the help of the Fedora language testing group. There was a L10n test day on August 18, and an I18n test day on September 1.

The L10n test day tested translations in Fedora apps. The team checked whether apps are localized, and whether their text is available for translation. Here’s a summary:

The I18n test day checked input methods. Input methods allow users to enter data using their language. These are often combined with special fonts and rendering to make language readable. The team tested default and language specific input methods. They also checked script rendering and related tools like fonts-tweak-tool and dnf-langpacks. In summary:

Getting involved

Are you a non-English speaking Fedora user with globalization issues? Do you have an idea for improvement? If so, discuss with the team early in the development phase of Fedora. Once the Alpha and Beta releases happen, we’re already working on making features stable. You can see the important dates on the Fedora release schedule.

You can also get involved in Fedora development as a tester. As you can see, there’s a good level of friendly help in our globalization related test days. We’d love your help too, to move Fedora and upstream projects ahead for users in your region!

Fedora Project community

4 Comments

  1. David

    I’m not sure what you mean by “unifying” globalization work. Something like this recently happened in the Windows world – I cannot find a way to use my local input method (keyboard) without also using the local language.

    I am not a native English speaker and Fedora is translated into my language. However, for various reasons I prefer using the English version of Fedora, while using my local Keyboard – so I hope those two won’t become tied together as they did in the Windows world.

    • In this context, it means the I18n and L10n teams putting their efforts together for roadmapping and testing features. It does not mean taking away the ability to use different G11n features of the OS.

    • Since most people that use English locale expect only English, so by default, the input method framework is disabled for English locale.

      So when you press Win+Space or Ctrl+Space, the input method won’t be jump out and scare people that don’t require English.

      You can enable the input method by the “Regional” or “Language Setting” in your desktop environment or run ibus-daemon in the automatic start up script.

    • As Ding-Yi Chen said. No need to change whole system language to just enable input method for different language 🙂

      I use English on my Fedora 23 and have 7-8 different language input methods enabled.

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