Well, I have now found some time to dig in to the localzation issue of firefox and thunderbird.
As mentioned the above preferences did not cover all scenarios regarding localization.
I made some further testing with the results showing below. Here we go:
Firefox & Thunderbird: Localization
How to get language packs for Firefox and Thunderbird enabled automatically?
Current Situation:
The user starts MX-live or the freshly installed MX-Linux with a selected default language.
After starting Firefox or Thunderbird (FF/TB) the user interface (UI) is shown in English instead of the chosen system language. The user will go into MX package installer (MXPI) to install the missing language pack. The user might still not have the default UI-language after starting FF/TB again. S/he either need first to confirm and enable the new language pack and restart FB/TB. In some cases the user might still not have the correct UI-language despite having enabled the language pack manually within FF/TB.
Requirements:
- System wide installed language-pack plugins shall be got automatically enabled:
-> for current selected default system language
-> without manually enabling and without user confirmation
-> for first time login
-> for newly created FF/TB profiles
-> for existing FF/TB profiles
- Manually installed user plugins/extensions would still need to be confirmed and enabled by the user
Solution:
Firefox and Thunderbird honors some system preferences to achieve the above requirements.
The following preferences will fulfill the requirements above
for
both Firefox and Thundebird (verfied with FF60.0 and TB52.7):
Pref-filename: distribution.js
Pref-directory FF: /opt/firefox/browser/defaults/preferences
Pref-directory TB: /opt/thunderbird/defaults/preferences/
The preference file distribution.js :
Code: Select all
// filename: distribution.js
// pref-dir: /opt/firefox/browser/defaults/preferences/
// : /opt/thunderbird/defaults/preferences/
pref("intl.locale.matchOS", true);
pref("intl.locale.requested", "");
pref("extensions.enabledScopes", 4);
pref("extensions.autoDisableScopes", 11);
The following places where system-wide preferences could also have been specified will NOT work to satisfy the above requirements due to timing issue during sequence of UI-generation:
- distribution.ini within /opt/thunderbird/distribution or /opt/firefox/distribution, resp.
- preferences within the pref-dirs /opt/firefox/defaults/pref and /opt/thunderbird/defaults/pref, resp.
/opt/firefox/distribution/distribution.ini
Note:
The language pack provided for thunderbird from MXPI will NOT cover the localization of the embedded calendar lightning-extension.
In order to get the thunderbird calendar localized the user would need to manual install the corresponding localized lightning-calendar-plugin.
Suggestion:
To automatically enable localized calendar a package request is suggested to have the localized lightning-calendar-plugin for thunderbird as part of the language pack available through MXPI.
Package-Hint:
The localized lightning-extension is availble by mozilla as a xpi-file with
the filename format lightning-X.X-sm+tb-linux.xpi (X.X indicating the version).
The extension file has to be renamed to {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}.xpi
and placed with the distribution externsion directory as
/opt/thunderbird/extensions/{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}.xpi
Wiki:
The Wiki entries regarding localization shall be updated
correspondingly to reflect the automatic localization process above,
when in place.
