475016 - [ml] Search engine setup for Firefox 3.1 for Malayalam.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: ml / Malayalam, defect)

Description

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

We want to ship Firefox 3.1 a good list of search engines for Malayalam. 

We're going to work towards this in three phases. First, the localization team and Stas (Stas Malolepszy) will look at the market for the language and come up with a good set of search providers. Ani, we'll need your input on this, the guidelines for making recommendations are on http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_web_services_guidelines. 

For en-US, we currently use this set, to which we can fall back in the case of lacking localized alternatives:
Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers, CC, eBay, Wikipedia

In bug 394749, the following search engines were chosen:
Google, Yahoo.in, eBay.in, Wikipedia (ml).
We can extend or change this list.

After we decided on a particular search engine, Stas will contact the owner and ask for permission, and for specifics like proper search flags. undefined, we'll likely need your help to at least get the contact information.

Once we have a specification on what the search engines for Malayalam should look like, the localization team and Stas will work on an implementation on that. This should happen by the localization team creating and attaching patches for the desired changes, and requesting review from Stas. After a successful review, the localization team will land them.

Please don't commit any modifications in browser/searchplugins to the hg repository without a patch reviewed by Stas, Axel or someone else appointed by Stas or SethB. The data here is sensitive to users and our search partners, thus the extra care here.

Comment 1

[Seth Bindernagel]

Malayalam team:  Have you made any progress here?  We would love ml to ship with Firefox 3.5 during the beta development cycle.  As of today, you are very close, with just 145 strings remaining to translate for FF 3.5 beta 4.

However, we should do some research about what search engines should be included in your localized build.  Can you make some suggestions for us?  You are definitely the best resource for us to ask what is most appropriate for Malayalam users.  :)  

Please do send us some suggestions.

Comment 2

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Ping? :)

Comment 3

[Seth Bindernagel]

Have you made any progress here?  As mentioned in the wiki linked to above, we should do some research about what search engines should be included in your localized build.  You are the best resource for us to ask what is most appropriate for Malayalam users.  

When you are considering your search engines, please keep in mind that we are looking for 2 providers in three categories:  

1)  general purpose engines
2)  e-commerce engines
3)  specific-interest engines

Please feel free to recommend two for each category in advance of the release of Firefox 3.5.  This will help us move Malayalam from beta to "official" status.

Comment 4

[Praveen A]

Google, Yahoo.in, eBay.in, Wikipedia (ml) looks like a good list. I would like to Suggest Webdunia as an extension to this
http://search.webdunia.com/malayalam.html

Comment 5

[Seth Bindernagel]

Thanks, Praveen.  Can you provide just a bit more background on Webdunia?  I did a little bit of research through Alexa, a web research company, but would love to learn more about the service.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.webdunia.com%2Fmalayalam.html

What about Reddiff?

Comment 6

[Praveen A]

Webdunia and its sister projects for many indian laguages (weblokam in Malayalam) is one of the early Indian language portals. weblokam.com is first internet portal in Malayalam. I still remember reading about it in local print media when I was a newbie to the internet 8 years back. One good point about this search engine is the proper handling of unicode special characters (ZWJ and ZWNJ) in search and display which others does not do correctly. I would prefer webdunia over yahoo.

Rediff used to be popular as an email provider and internet portal. Rediff could be included in the e commerce section. (http://shopping.rediff.com/shopping/index.html)

I would also suggest english malayalam dictionary search in specific interest section. http://www.mashithantu.com/malayalam-dictionary/nighantu.html

So my preference would be

1) google, webdunia
2) rediff, ebay
3) wikipedia, mashithandu

Comment 7

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #6)

Hi Praveen: thanks for great explanations.
 
> So my preference would be
> 
> 1) google, webdunia
> 2) rediff, ebay
> 3) wikipedia, mashithandu

This list looks great. One addition I would make to it is to include Creative Commons as we would like to promote this project and its mission (which is similar to ours).

Ani, Joyce, what is your opinion?

Praveen, would you mind helping me gather the contact information for webdunia, rediff and mashithandu?

Comment 8

[Praveen A]

Mashithandu jojujohnc at gmail dot com
Webdunia benny at webdunia dot com

No direct contacts in Rediff :-(

Comment 9

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

E-mails sent to Mashithandu and Webdunia.

Comment 10

[Ani Peter]

I think we should go ahead with  google, rediff, ebay and wikipedia.. I guess waiting for reply from mashithandu and Webdunia is blocking Malayalam firefox 3.5 release.

Comment 11

[Seth Bindernagel]

Attachment: ml search plugins

(In reply to comment #10)
> I think we should go ahead with  google, rediff, ebay and wikipedia.. I guess
> waiting for reply from mashithandu and Webdunia is blocking Malayalam firefox
> 3.5 release.

Reporting an update:

Staś receive instructions from Webdunia to include their search service in the ml version.  I also notice that the group has decided to remove Yahoo.in.  Therefore, our final list is

1)  general purpose engines:  Google, Webdunia
2)  e-commerce engines:  Rediff, eBay
3)  specific-interest engines:  Wikipedia

I've created a patch that adds Webdunia and Rediff and removes Yahoo.  I tested both the Webdunia and Rediff plugins locally and they work. 

Staś, please provide a review.  If/when the patch is approved, then the ml team can check it in.

Comment 12

[Seth Bindernagel]

Attachment: ml search plugins

edited region.properties and added it to the diff

Comment 13

[Seth Bindernagel]

Attachment: new patch with region properties amended

I realized I had created a patch against l10n central.  This patch is for 1.9.1.  Sorry for the several patches.

Comment 14

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Comment on attachment 394051 [details] [diff] [review]
new patch with region properties amended

Thanks Seth for the patch. I got an e-mail from Webdunia regarding one of their parameters, I'll update it in a moment and attach a new patch here.

Comment 15

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Attachment: Updated search params as per Webdunia's request

This is an updated patch which changes one of the Webdunia's parameters to:
<Param name="FF" value="SearchBox" />

This is ready for landing. 

Please land it on mozilla-1.9.1, mozilla-1.9.2 and l10n-central. Please use a descriptive commit message, e.g. "Bug 475016: Search engine setup for Firefox 3.1 for Malayalam. Add Rediff, Webdunia, remove Yahoo, p=sethb, r=stas".

For mozilla-1.9.1: when the patch lands, please add fixed1.9.1 keyword to this bug. Next, please test the search plugins and if they're OK, please reply in the current opt-in thread in mozilla.dev.l10n <http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/browse_frm/thread/4b9ad68b32106157> with the new revision number. If Axel approves it and the fix makes it to
3.5.4, please set the status1.9.1 flag to .4-fixed.

For mozilla-1.9.2: when the patch lands, please add fixed1.9.2 keyword to this bug.

For l10n-central: when the patch lands, feel free to mark this bug as
fixed. 

Thanks.

Comment 16

[Ani Peter]

I have applied the patch and committed the changes to 1.9.1, l10n-central and 1.9.2. But could not test. Please check whether things are done correctly and let me know if I need to fix anything else.
I am adding the keywords 1.9.1, 1.9.2 and marking this bug as fixed

Comment 17

[Ani Peter]

i am not able to add the keywords 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 as per comment #15. also cannot change the status to fixed :(. Please help

Comment 18

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Hi Ani, just tweaked your bugzilla priviledges so now you can confirm and edit bugs. Please use those permissions carefully, in particular when it comes down to bugs that are not on the Malayalam localization.

Comment 19

[Ani Peter]

Pike thanks a lot for providing me those privileges. I am adding the keywords fixed1.9.1 and fixed1.9.2, Also marking bug as fixed....
Please advise if anything more to be done/any corrections to be done.

Comment 20

[Ani Peter]

Stas, I tried to add keyword - "fixed1.9.2" as per your comment #15, but its not available in the keyword list. Also to mark the bug as fixed, the status has been changed to "resolved".
 (In reply to comment #15)
> Created an attachment (id=396279) [details]
> Updated search params as per Webdunia's request
> 
> This is an updated patch which changes one of the Webdunia's parameters to:
> <Param name="FF" value="SearchBox" />
> 
> This is ready for landing. 
> 
> Please land it on mozilla-1.9.1, mozilla-1.9.2 and l10n-central. Please use a
> descriptive commit message, e.g. "Bug 475016: Search engine setup for Firefox
> 3.1 for Malayalam. Add Rediff, Webdunia, remove Yahoo, p=sethb, r=stas".
> 
> For mozilla-1.9.1: when the patch lands, please add fixed1.9.1 keyword to this
> bug. Next, please test the search plugins and if they're OK, please reply in
> the current opt-in thread in mozilla.dev.l10n
> <http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/browse_frm/thread/4b9ad68b32106157>
> with the new revision number. If Axel approves it and the fix makes it to
> 3.5.4, please set the status1.9.1 flag to .4-fixed.
> 
> For mozilla-1.9.2: when the patch lands, please add fixed1.9.2 keyword to this
> bug.
> 
> For l10n-central: when the patch lands, feel free to mark this bug as
> fixed. 
> 
> Thanks.

Comment 21

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #16)
> I have applied the patch and committed the changes to 1.9.1, l10n-central and
> 1.9.2. But could not test. 

Ani, you can test in a 1.9.1 nightly build available here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-1.9.1-l10n/. I tested it and the change looked OK, but I would appreciate it if you could test as well. 

For 1.9.2, you'll have to fix an installer bustage, see bug 524502 for details.

Comment 22

[Ani Peter]

Stas, thanks a lot for assisting me through out the bug. Yes I have tested ml from the nightly build and confirm that changes have been reflected and looks good.

Comment 23

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Great to hear that, Ani. Have you posted the new revision number in the .l10n newsgroup in the opt-in thread yet? It this one: <http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/browse_frm/thread/4b9ad68b32106157>.

Comment 24

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Stas, I think you need to update l10n-src-verification for this landing, too?

Comment 25

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Yep, thanks Axel. 

l10n-src-verification for 1.9.1 updated in:
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n/l10n-src-verification/rev/810ddf3fdf09

l10n-src-verification for 1.9.2 updated in:
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n/l10n-src-verification/rev/0e24c816f9a2
http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n/l10n-src-verification/rev/296d82a048ec

FWIW, we're still waiting for a new opt-in from Ani here.

Comment 26

[Ani Peter]

Stas, Apologies for the delay. I have opted in with http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n-mozilla-1.9.1/ml/rev/1cc77f2a46b7 on the thread you have mentioned on Comment 23