Aisle

Aisle is the project name for an Integrated Localization Environment (ILE).

The idea is to create an editing and testing environment for Firefox localizations on the web. It's consisting of project and repository management features, l10n editing support, and a backend service to host auto-updating and restartless language packs for testing while you translate.

Aisle is supposed to help localizers to contribute, collaborate, and cooperate.

How is it different?

Existing localization tools are mostly form-based. They're presenting the English string, take a translation in the next field, and then serialize that to a file, which can then be used by the program or build system. The struggle we're facing is that you can't do anything that the form doesn't support. You can't fix any problem that the serialization algorithm broke. In many of those tools, you can't really edit a single string.

Existing Integrated Development Environments on the other hand are tailored to code writers, and there's very little help to actually edit localization files.

Thus, Aisle is taking the foundations of IDEs, and adds code-assist and syntax highlighting tailored for localization workflows. Think of it as code completion not giving you a javascript variable name, but a translation memory suggestion. A "Build" button won't return an executable, but create a language pack to install in the Firefox you're using to edit.

User stories and features are gathered on the project page.

Next Steps

We're going to start working on a set of plugins for cloud9. Where we host our code is TBD right now. Axel will reach out to a first group of Firefox localizers that are hacker to get some dogfood going.

Design

With c9 as base system, there is a good outline for the design of the project.