app-install-data-ubuntu

Menu items should take the translations from a central place

Registered by Gabor Kelemen

Desktop files have an X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain field, which the translation file containing the translation of the user-visible strings. This has the advantage of being updatable via language packs. However, it has a disadvantage: performance. In a default Ubuntu install, lots of small .mo files (in total, 3-4 MB of size) should be read into memory at Gnome's startup, making the slow process even slower - only to display the translated messages. The solution would be using the new app-install-data translation file, which was created for gnome-app-install to translate the list of all installable packages. This is a single file, only about 200kb, and updatable via language packs.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Gabor Kelemen
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

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Things necessary to do this:
- Make the app-install-data template reuse existing translations: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/305433
- Decision at UDS Jaunty: is this a good idea? Getting a mentor who pushes all the patches to the packages would be a plus ;)
- Patch all packages in Ubuntu main, X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=`their respective template name` -> X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=app-install-data

Danilo says: "I don't believe gettext introduces any performance issues: it's so fricking fast that I would suggest not doing this unless a very substantial peformance profiling has been done that shows this is the case. Also, note that not all .desktop files are described in app-install-data (afaik), and that if there is a performance bottleneck, it was introduced by Ubuntu's special handling of .desktop files in the first place."

Gettext is fast, but my hard drive is definitely not. I'll see if I can get some profiling data. - Kelemeng

(?)

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