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Status
Please check the
status page
on work being done around
Mozilla
Description
Mozilla
is an Open Source Internet suite that emerges from the source code
of the Netscape suite. It includes navigation, e-mail and news
management, web development and a chat utility.
Mozilla
is the most important and best known Internet suite in the Open
Source world. Together with Netscape (its proprietary version) is
the main alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Besides the Mozilla suite, different features of the suite
are also available as independent products, such as the Navigator
(under the Firefox product name), e-mail (known as
Thunderbird).
Mozilla has been traduced to more than 50 languages, including some
Indic languages.
In
their website they say:
“The
mission of the Mozilla project is to
preserve choice and innovation on the Internet.
We
are:
-
The producer and
provider of the award-winning Mozilla web and e-mail
applications suite.
-
Leading innovators,
developing the next generation of web browsers, e-mail
software, web page editors and more.
-
A software development tools
provider.
-
An open source community
of developers and testers.
-
A partner for the
technology industry.
-
An advocate for
standards on the Net who provides tools for developing
standard web content.
-
Educators,
providing educational materials about Internet technologies
and software development.”
Mozilla can be used as a suite or compiled as separate
stand-alone applications. Thunderbird is the stand-alone
e-mail program and Firefox the stand-alone browser.
Interest
for the KhmerOS Initiative
Mozilla
seems to be a very interesting suite for this project for
several reasons:
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It is quite complete and well maintained.
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It can me made modular. We can first translate the e-mail
program, release it and then the rest, in modules.
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It works well under Windows in Khmer Unicode (correct use of
uniscribe).
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It is widely used.
Drawbacks
Language
support
On
Windows, Mozilla uses the Microsoft Uniscribe engine
(USP10.dll). It seems to work correctly with version 1.471.4030, but
further testing should be done.
On
Linux, the main build of Mozilla does not support Khmer.
Nevertheless, there is a patch that allows Mozilla to work with
Pango (for which we do have support). The patch can be found in:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215219
(Remember to follow the instructions in the comments that follow the
bugreport).
Pango offers screen display support, but not
printing support. Keep an eye on our
status
pages to know what is happening on this front.
For more about Pango, check our
Gnome page.
Translation
Mozilla
has been translated to a good number of languages, including some
indic languages. The translation work is more or less well
organized, with its mailing lists, translation tools, status pages
and help pages.
Translation is coordinated by a support team.
Translating all of
Mozilla involves traslating around 9,000 messages. The full
documentation is about one megabyte of information in help files
(roughly equivalent to 120 pages of documentation). There are some
very basic user manuals.
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