Lion Activity

The Lion (L10n) activity is designed to support learners using Sugar to provide localization for their own native languages.

It is derived from the Hello World activity. Version 1 will be limited to Sugar activities installed on the learner's laptop. It also requires that the target native language be in the locales supported by the installed image.

User Interaction

The learner launches the activity by clicking on a rampant lion icon. She is presented a list of available locales and selects (double-clicks) on the target native language. She is then presented a list of installed activities which support localization (have a po directory) and selects an activity to localize.

In the main process, the user is presented strings one-by-one from the activity's po file (or Pot if a po is not available). The learner accepts, edits, or creates a localized string.

When complete, the resulting po file is saved in the selected target activity (overwriting the existing file, if any). the activity will compile the po file to the associated mo file.

The learner then sets the locale (if needed) and launches the target activity to check the newly localized version.

Usage

The learner can share the localized activity with others by usb key (sugar-install-bundle) or by a school server (or possible dedicated localization server based on xsce).

At any time, the localized activity could be uploaded to be incorporated in translate.sugarlabs.org.

One can imagine a class assignment in which each learner takes a different Sugar activity and provides localization as class project. One could also imagine a team reviewing a localized activity to offer suggestions for alternate strings.

A future version could add the capability to localize Sugar itself.

A future version could add collaboration to enable teams to review and agree on a consensus choice for a localized string.