This document discusses localization testing tools Silme and compare-locales. Silme is a new localization library written in Python that aims to simplify common localization operations and make localization testing easier. Compare-locales is a tool for testing the completeness and correctness of localizations that has been rewritten to use the Silme library. The document provides an overview of Silme's goals, architecture, API and features. It also describes how compare-locales has been updated to take advantage of Silme while retaining similar functionality to earlier versions.

1. Localization testing
with compare-locales and Silme
by Adrian Kalla

2. Me
● Computer Science studies in
Wuerzburg/Germany
● Member of the Polish Mozilla-L10n-Community
since 2002/2003
● Internship@MoCo: August-December 2008

3. Why do we need L10n-tests?
● Localizers:
– to easily find possible problems
● Developers:
– to make sure a localization does not break
everything

4. Silme & compare-locales
● Silme is a new localization library written in
Python
● Compare-locales is a tool for testing the
completeness and correctness of
localizations

5. The world before Silme
● Mozilla Translator
● Narro
● Translate Toolkit
● Litmus
● compare-locales
● and much more...

6. Mozilla Translator
● Probably the
oldest tool for
Mozilla L10n
● Still maintained
● Causes some
problems with
file layout

7. Narro
● Powerful
localization tool
● Translation
suggestions
● Language pack
creation
● Web-only

8. Translate Toolkit
● Collection of many small tools
● Main goal: convert every L10n file to PO to
work with every L10n-Tool that supports PO
files
● Requires back and forth converting to and from
PO

9. Litmus
● Huge collection of manual tests
● Good for testing problems which cannot be
tested automatically
● Requires much time for testing

10. compare-locales - History
● Started as a small Perl script for testing localizations
for missing and obsolete files and entities, only
● More was needed → rewrite as a bigger Python
application
– checking for other problems, like encoding or DTD
parsing problems
– statistics (e.g.: “unmodified: 500 strings”)
● Beginning with August 2008: second rewrite, based
on the Silme library

11. Other Tools...
● Verbatim (mozootle)
● Probably every bigger localization team has
made an own set of scripts and tools
– And every time they start, they start with the
question:
● “How do we access and parse the L10n-files...”

12. What are the common problems?
● focused on the front-end
● usually dependent on one data format
● not easy extensible
● continuous wheel reinvention:
– missing layer between apps and data

13. Silme - Goals
● generic l10n operations simplified to maximum
● format independency
● platform independency
● easy extensible
● make localization over time easier

14. Silme - Target
● L10n tools developers
● Localizers with beginner programming
knowledge
● Application developers
● Buildsystem admins

15. Silme – The Name
● Silme (seel-may) is a
letter in the Tengwar
alphabet (Tolkien)

16. Silme - Features
● strong diff support
● extensible input/output (file, zip, sql, cvs, hg,
svn, ...)
● extensible format support (dtd, prop., po,
l20n, ...)
● modular (core, diff, formats, io)
● multilocale

17. Silme - Structure
● silme.core
● silme.diff
● silme.io
● silme.format
● silme.fp

18. Silme - API - silme.core
● silme.core.Entity
● silme.core.EntityList
● silme.core.L10nObject
● silme.core.L10nPackage

19. Silme - API - silme.core.Entity
# properties
offlineApps.manageUsage=Show settings
# dtd
<!ENTITY netError.search.button quot;Szukajquot;>
# gettext
msgid quot;YaST installation sourcequot;
msgstr quot;Źródło instalacji YaSTquot;
id value
entity -> offlineApps.manageUsage Show settings
netError.search.button Źródło instalacji YaST
YaST installation source Szukaj
id value

20. Silme - API - silme.core.EntityList
itemHistory.label Browsing History
itemHistory.accesskey B
itemPasswords.label Saved Passwords
itemCookies.label Cookies
entityList = EntityList()
entityList.id = “sanitize.dtd”
entity = Entity(‘itemHistory.label’)
entity.setValue(‘Browsing History’)
entityList.addEntity(entity)

21. Silme - API - silme.core.L10nObject
entity
ntemporary
nn disabledn
<!ENTITY itemCookies.label
quot;Cookiesquot;> comment entity
<!-- ntemporary
temporary disabled n disabledn
<!ENTITY itemDisabled
“ Dis a b le d ” > entity
-->
<!ENTITY itemCookies.accesskey quot;Cquot;>
<!ENTITY itemCache.label n
quot;Cachequot;><!ENTITY itemCache.accesskey quot;aquot;>
entity
entity

22. Silme - API - EntityList, L10nObject
● Why both?
– EntityLists:
● easy and fast
● no file layout preservation
– L10nObject:
● preserves file layout for 1:1 reconstruction
● time consuming

23. Silme - API - silme.core.L10nPackage
l 10nPackage = {
id: ‘mozapps’,
objects: {},
packages: {
‘d o w n l o a d s ’ : . . .
‘h e l p ’ : {
id: ‘help’,
packages: {},
objects:{
‘h e l p. d t d ’ : L 1 0 n O b j e c t ,
‘h e l p. p r o p e r t i e s ’ : L 1 0 n O b j e c t }
}
‘p r o f l e ’ : . . .
}

24. Silme - API - silme.diff
● silme.diff.(Entity|EntityList|L10nObject|
L10nPackage)Diff
● silme.core.*.diff()
● silme.core.*.applyDiff()
entityDiff = entity.diff(entity2)
entityListDiff = entityList.diff(entityList2)
entity2 = entity.applyDiff(entityDiff)
entityListDiff2 = entityList.applyDiff(entityList2)

25. Silme - API - silme.io
● silme.io.manager
● silme.io.file|svn|cvs|hg|jar|mysql
● *.getL10nPackage()
● *.writeL10nPackage()

26. Silme - API - silme.format
● silme.format.*.Parser
● silme.format.*.Structure
● silme.format.*.Serializer

27. Silme - API - silme.fp
● silme.fp.object
● silme.fp.diff

28. Silme - Examples
1) Count the number of entities in a directory
2) Find all entities containing the word “karta”

29. Silme - Future
TODO:
1)PEP08
2)Documentation
3)Stable release

30. compare-locales “2.0”
● Main ideas:
– use all the powers of Silme in a tool that would
provide at least the same functionality like the
first Python version of compare-locales (for
the beginning)
– use it to ensure that Silme works

31. compare-locales - log
● First attempt: make the existing compare-
locales use Silme as the I/O API
– It worked (somehow), but with the use of many
hacks
● Final attempt: write it from scratch

32. compare-locales - Requirements
● L10n.ini
● specific output style
● L10nPackage and L10nObject statistics
● filtering packages and objects
● collecting errors and warnings
● INI-Files
● adding new features

33. compare-locales – L10n.ini File
● Specifies where to look for L10n-files in Mozilla
source

34. compare-locales – Output Style
● Tree-like with short paths
● As requested by a community
member:
– A second one with full paths

35. compare-locales – Statistics
● Provide statistics for entities,
files and problems
regarding them

36. compare-locales – Filtering
● Filter unneeded elements for testing

37. compare-locales – Errors
● There are many things, which should not be in
a L10n-file. Find and report them:
– Encoding problems:
– Duplicated entities:

38. compare-locales – New features
● Some of the features on previous slides, like
finding duplicate entities or checking for
correct encoding, are already new features
● But there is more. For example:
– Checking access keys for correctness
– Comparing not only Mozilla source files, but extensions
too
– Spell checking of strings
– Your_feature_could_be_here...

39. compare-locales – Access Keys
● Basic access keys checks can be done
automatically:
– access key present in the corresponding label
– access key with only one character
– are this policies being followed:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Accesskey_FAQ_and_Policies

40. compare-locales – Extensions
● Compare extensions, too:
● Useful for extensions authors to check if missing
entities will not break the whole application
● And for AMO: an extension could be checked while
adding it

41. compare-locales – New features
● How complicated is it to add a feature?
– Finding duplicate entities:
● 3 lines of code
– Finding broken access keys (basic version):
● ~ 5 lines
– Adding support for comparing extensions:
● Only a few hours of work

42. Limitations
● What is not possible with Silme and compare-
locales:
– Testing how the localization works when using
it with the application it was written for
● MozMill can do automated UI testing
– It will not make a coffee for you ;)

43. Links
● Silme:
– http://diary.braniecki.net/tag/silme/ (Gandalfs blog posts about Silme)
– http://hg.mozilla.org/users/zbraniecki_mozilla.com/silme/ (HG repository)
● Compare-locales:
– http://pypi.python.org/simple/compare-locales/ (Python version)
– http://hg.mozilla.org/users/akalla_aviary.pl/silme-patched/ (Silme version,
HG repository)
– http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/toolkit/locales/compare-locales.pl
(Old Perl version)

44. Q&A

45. Thank you