Good news and bad news

First the good news. I reformatted my computer and tested WineLocale on a fresh install. It works, with one small problem that was anticipated: you do need to go to the Ubuntu language menu and add the languages you wish you use.

Dan and I had talked about this in email, and it was originally suggested that WineLocale add locale support in this way. It’s probably for the best, because it makes WineLocale feel more “integrated.” To save space and download time, you can just add the language’s IME support or something similar from the expander rather than the numerous translation files.

On the down side, I won’t have enough time to get the beta out this week. Work just dropped on us some news that we have to put on a presentation at a company party this Friday, so all my free time must be routed to that project. Sorry for the let-down.

I will be back to work on WineLocale on Saturday, and with any luck will have an early working beta by Sunday or Monday.

I could use more UI localizations. I believe ^Skeud^ may do a French UI file. I’ve received files for Portuguese (Brasil) and Simplified Chinese from gamer_boy and Jacky Waiss. If you want to see WineLocale in your language, translate this file and email it to me.

Please be sure to change the “language=” line to the name for your language in your language. In other words, if you are sending me a Japanese file, it should say “日本語,” not “Japanese.” Credit yourself by writing whatever name you would like to be called in the “translator=” line.

Thanks in advance to anyone who sends in new languages.

WineLocale now being synced to SVN

I’ve set up SVN on my system again so updates are once again being synchronized on the Google Code repository. I’ve put in at least 6 hours today and the new WineLocale is up to almost 30KB of working code.

The layout was kept the same as the old version, but I scrapped the lines which allowed for using Microsoft’s TrueType core fonts. Why? Because I’m a bastard and don’t want to let you do that.

Actually, it’s because those fonts are, if everything continues as planned, entirely unnecessary. I have programmed WineLocale to use the same fallbacks as Ubuntu’s fontconfig. Ubuntu pulls Kochi Gothic for its Japanese, glyphs, so WineLocale does the same. Expand that to include Chinese, Korean and Russian.

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Back at work on WineLocale

OK, first off, talk about a blown release date! I said I would have a beta out what … a year ago? Ubuntu is on its second release since that announcement and my old guide fails on Ubuntu Ibex.

While I personally have little use for Wine let alone WineLocale, I do realize how important it is to other people. You can give special thanks to Dan Kegel, who has written to me many times over the last few months and without whose mails I likely would never have looked at this again.

I’m not complaining. I am actually very glad someone cares enough to write me!

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