What is globalization?

In software, globalization means two ways to make software useful globally: internationalization and localization. Because technical folks don’t enjoy typing long words, these are often abbreviated. Respectively we refer to them as G11n, I18n, and L10n. (The numbers refer to how many letters have been dropped!)

• I18n is making software capable of supporting global users.
• L10n is making translations for the text that appears in software.

So globalization ensures all users can use software, regardless of language. There’s a recent proposal in Fedora to unify our globalization work. This brings benefits for all users, by tying together I18n and L10n efforts for better results.

Test days for Fedora 23

Each Fedora release, developers add interesting features and changes. The Fedora QA group puts in extra effort to make sure these features work well. The Fedora QA group runs test days, together with our development teams. Test days usually happen between Alpha and Beta test releases. These events are essential to help us find critical flaws.

The Globalization team organized two test days for Fedora 23. There was a L10n test day on August 18, and an I18n test day on September 1.

The L10n test day tested translations in Fedora apps. The team checked whether apps are localized, and whether their text is available for translation. Here’s a summary:

• The team tested total 42 applications
• Participants included Abdel G. Martínez L., Nie Lili, Adam Williamson and Amanpreet Alam.
• The team reported 11 bugs, and eight of these are already resolved.

The I18n test day checked input methods. Input methods allow users to enter data using their language. These are often combined with special fonts and rendering to make language readable. The team tested default and language specific input methods. They also checked script rendering and related tools like fonts-tweak-tool and dnf-langpacks. In summary:

• Team members included Mike Fabian, Nie Lili, Parag Nemade, Akira Tagoh, Lukas Brabec, Pravin Satpute, Giulio Erler, idviare, and Kari Koskinen.
• The team reported ten bugs, and six of these are already resolved.

Getting involved

Are you a non-English speaking Fedora user with globalization issues? Do you have an idea for improvement? If so, discuss with the team early in the development phase of Fedora. Once the Alpha and Beta releases happen, we’re already working on making features stable. You can see the important dates on the Fedora release schedule.

You can also get involved in Fedora development as a tester. As you can see, there’s a good level of friendly help in our globalization related test days. We’d love your help too, to move Fedora and upstream projects ahead for users in your region!