M12 Release Notes
READ THIS Before You Install
The name of the binary executable has changed from apprunner to mozilla.
If you experience a crash upon launch, delete your Mozilla registry.
The format of the Mozilla registry has changed on all platforms since M9.
- Mac OS: Open your System Folder's Preferences folder, and delete the
"Mozilla Registry" file.
- Windows: Open your Windows directory, and delete "mozregistry.dat".
- Linux: open your ~/.mozilla directory, and delete the "registry" file.
For more information, please see
news://news.mozilla.org/37E8A320.D3420962%40netscape.com.
If you are installing on Win32 also read the installation
instructions for
additional information on problems with crashing upon launch.
The feature that remembers passwords has problems (Mac OS
only). It is recommended that you click Cancel when you are first asked if
you want this feature turned on. You can also turn off the feature in
Edit:Preferences:Advanced by unchecking the Automatically Prefill Usernames
and Passwords checkbox. (See bug #
21596.)
Install into a clean directory, or delete previous builds before
installing. Installing on top of previous milestone builds or released
product builds may cause problems. Incompatibilities may be introduced
from milestone to milestone while the software is under development.
On Linux systems that use glibc 2.0 (such as RedHat 5.2), there
are problems with dl functions (dlopen(), dlsym()) not being thread safe.
This might cause your M12 build to randomly crash at startup. If this happens
to you, try running the application a few more times. The bits posted on
ftp.mozilla.org are built on RedHat 6.0, which uses glibc 2.1 and does
not have this problem. For more details, see bug 8849.
Do not use Java Plugin 1.3. It doesn't work with the most recent
Mozilla builds, and crashes will result. Make sure there are no files named
*npjava*.* in either the bin/plugins directory or the NS4.x plugins directory.
This problem is being addressed. For more information about this bug, see
bug 5369.
Proxies ARE working in this release. See bug 8559
for details on setting up.
Installing the M12 Release Build
Installation Instructions -- Unix
-
Create a directory named "mozilla" and move the tar.gz file into the mozilla
directory.
mkdir mozilla ;
mv mozilla*.tar.gz mozilla
-
Change to the mozilla directory and untar the archive. This will create
a directory called "package".
cd mozilla ;
gzip -dc mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-M12.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
-
Change to the "package" directory.
mv mozilla*.tar.gz ../ ;
cd package
-
Run mozilla with the run script:
./mozilla
Important: If you are running Seamonkey on Solaris see also the
Mozilla on Solaris FAQ,
which documents Solaris 2.6 patches needed to build and run.
Mail Instructions for Unix
You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and
use Account Setup to set up your servers.
Installation Instructions -- Win32
You will need a copy of WinZip. This is shareware available at http://www.winzip.com
(also at http://www.download.com).
Important: You must run the Seamonkey installer (mozilla-win32-installer-M12.exe;
find it here)
at least once when installing M12. The installer updates
two Microsoft C Runtime Libraries that the zip file cannot change: MSVCRT.DLL and
MSVCIRT.DLL, which must both be version 6.0.8168.0 or later. These
updated DLLs are necessary to prevent a crash on launch of Seamonkey. Note: The installer
requires a reboot when it updates these DLLs.
-
Click once on the mozilla-win32.zip link. The file will be downloaded to
your default folder.
-
Click on the mozilla-win32.zip file to launch WinZip.
-
After clicking "I Agree" to terms of WinZip shareware, click the Extract
button in the WinZip tool bar. An x86 folder with application and associated
files will be unzipped.
-
Select Mozilla from x86 folder to launch the program.
-
Run "mozilla.exe" to use browser and mail.
-
Run "viewer.exe" to run only the gecko layout engine
Note: If you have an existing 5.0 profile as well as unmigrated 4.x profiles, and the
command mozilla does not launch seamonkey, use the command mozilla -installer
which brings up Profile Manager and allows the user to select a profile.
Mail Instructions for Win32
You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and
use Account Setup to set up your servers.
Installation Instructions -- Mac OS
If you have StuffIt Expander™ installed and your browser is configured
to use it:
-
Click once on the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link. The file will be downloaded
to your default folder (usually the desktop) and StuffIt™ will start up
and convert it to mozilla-mac.sea for you. Then StuffIt will open up mozilla-mac.sea
and convert it to a folder called mozilla-mac for you.
-
Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "mozilla." (Note:
you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)
Note: If you try step one and your browser asks you what you want
to do it's because you don't have StuffIt™ configured. In that case, just
click Save and continue from Step #3 below.
If you do not have StuffIt Expander™ installed or your browser is
not properly configured:
-
Make sure you have StuffIt™ somewhere on your hard drive.
-
Click and hold the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link.
-
Choose "Save this link as...".
You will see a file dialog box where you can select where you want
to save the file (for example, your Desktop).
Note: Do not use a slash (/) anywhere in the access path for the Mac installer.
Spaces are okay, but avoid other special characters.
-
Click the Save button.
-
Double-click on the newly created icon "mozilla-mac.sea.bin".
-
StuffIt™ will start up and simultaneously create a file "mozilla-mac.sea",
and a folder called "mozilla-mac."
-
Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "mozilla." (Note:
you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)
Mail Instructions for Macintosh
You can migrate an existing 4.x profile, or create a new profile and
use Account Setup to set up your servers.
Uninstalling the M12 Release Build
Linux
-
Remove the /package directory where you installed Seamonkey
-
Remove the ~/.mozilla directory, which contains profile information
Windows
-
Delete the directory where you installed Seamonkey
-
Delete c:\windows\mozregistry.dat
-
Delete the user profile directory, \users50
Mac OS
-
Remove the the folder Mozilla in the Documents folder
-
Remove the file "Mozilla Registry" in the System Folder | Preferences folder
-
Remove the folder where you installed Seamonkey (probably mozilla-mac-M12)
Files Created or Used
Windows |
user/ |
$windir/ |
prefs.js (Preferences file (used))
cache/ (cache directory)
cookies.txt (cookies file)
*cookperm.txt (used to selectively accept/reject
cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons.tbl and signonsx.tbl (logins and passwords
file store) |
mozregistry.dat (the Mozilla registry) |
Unix |
user/ |
~/.mozilla/ |
prefs.js in ~/.mozilla/[profile] (preferences
file (use))
Cache in ~/.mozilla/[profile](cache directory)
cookies (cookies file)
*cookperm (used to selectively accept/reject
cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons and signonsx (logins and passwords file
store) |
registry (the Mozilla registry) |
Mac |
prefs.js in ~/.mozilla/[profile] (preferences
file (use))
Cache in ~/.mozilla/[profile](cache directory)
cookies (cookies file)
*cookperm (used to selectively accept/reject
cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons and signonsx (logins and passwords file
store) |
System Folder/Preferences (the Mozilla registry) |
*Note:"cookperm.txt" ("cookperm" on Unix) is a file used to selectively
accept cookies from certain sites and not from others. It is used only
if you set your preferences so you see a warning before accepting cookies.
To do that, hand edit the prefs.js file to include:
user.pref ("network.cookie.rememberAboutCookies", true);
Limited Support Features
Caching
You can turn on caching in Preferences:
- Open Preferences.
- Click Debug:Enable Memory Cache.
Turning on caching should boost performance over dialup connections (LAN users, however, won't see huge speed
improvements).
Support is enabled for memory caching only, not for the disk cache, so cached data won't be
remembered across sessions. Please DO NOT report this as a bug.
Several cache bugs are being addressed:
- Sometimes the throbber will not shut off.
(bug 21162)
- You can't clear the cache, change its size, or change how oftren data is validated
with the server.
(bug 20893)
- Reload and Shift-Reload actions will not alter the behavior of the cache
(bug 21137)
Available Navigator Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Comments |
Back, Forward, Reload, Stop |
|
Occasionaly, Back and Forward may "forget" certain visited URLs. |
Location Field |
You can browse by entering URLs |
|
Various Menu Commands |
Menus do work, but many commands are not hooked up. These menus and
options are working: File menu: New Browser Window, New > Blank Page /
Page using Template ... / Page using Draft ..., Quit; Go menu; Bookmarks
menu |
Menu command that aren't hooked up are preceded by a period. |
Toolbars |
Toolbars display above and below content window, most buttons working
though a couple are not hooked up to execute a command. |
Downloadable chrome |
You can dynamically change the chrome (apply new skins and new content)
in M12 with the following caveats:
(1) Only Navigator is using the new chrome URLs. Messenger hasn't made
the switchover yet.
(2) Changes aren't persistent yet, so if you change the skin, the change
won't be remembered.
(3) The window doesn't dynamically refresh (once the window manager
is further along, it will). In order to see your changes, you need to open
up a new window after running the script to set the new skin. |
See the sample code in section 9 of the
downloadable chrome spec |
Link Buttons |
Buttons that simply link to a web address, including the N brand button,
Home, My Netscape. |
|
Access Personal Toolbar |
Links in Personal Toolbar are displayed and can be used |
Can't add or edit |
Access Bookmarks |
Access Bookmarks through Bookmarks menu |
Can load your current bookmarks
file. See instructions under platform installations. |
Access via Manage
Bookmarks Window |
Can open, close, and sort folders. |
|
Status Display |
Toolbar beneath content area, status during loading of URLs. |
|
Plugins |
Shockwave Flash™, RealAudio™, and MIDI files can be played with M12.
|
Some file types (.mov, .au) are not understood by mozilla. You cannot
add a new mime type to launch a helper application. |
Available Mail/News Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Start Mail |
Run Mozilla and bring up the three-pane mail window |
Get New Mail |
Download and display contents of local mail folders; POP |
Handle SMTP |
SMTP protocol works; send a message (note: on send, the compose message
window doesn't close) |
Display Message -- Mail |
Go to the "demos" menu and select several messages from your Inbox.
The message content is displayed in the message (lower right) pane. |
Display Folder List |
Local mail folders are displayed in the folder (left-hand) pane. |
Delete Message |
Delete a message using the Delete toolbar button. |
Edit/Send Text Message |
Bring up the compose window by clicking the New Msg button, type some
text, and send. |
Sorting -- Thread Pane |
Sorting works for Subject, Sender, Status, and Date. |
Move/Copy Messages |
You can move one message at a time. |
Read Attachments in Messages |
Attachments can be displayed in the message pane. |
Post message to newsgroup |
Using the compose window, post a message to a newsgroup. To post to
hosts other than news.mozilla.org, set the "network.hosts.nntp_server"
preference (the default NNTP server preference). Currently, the default
value of this preference is "news.mozilla.org". |
Post to multiple newsgroups simultaneously |
In the "Newsgroup:" field of the compose window, you can post to multiple
newsgroups at once. Use commas to separate the newsgroups. |
Display news hosts and subscribed newsgroups |
Using the prefs and the newsrc files (and if needed, the fat or NewsFAT
files), populate the folder pane with news hosts and subscribed newsgroups. |
Display News articles in thread pane |
When you click on a newsgroup, show the message subject, date, etc.
in the thread pane. |
Display Message -- News |
Click on a message in the thread pane and the message content is displayed
in the message pane. |
Get News |
Select a newsgroup in the folder pane and click on "Get Msg" to download
any new news articles. |
Marking news message as read |
Use the menu "Message | Mark | As Read" to mark a news message as read.
Currently, the read status is being saved, but not in the newsrc file.
This is a bug. (#8075) |
Viewing news message automatically marks it read |
Viewing a news message marks it read
Currently, the read status is being saved, but not in the newsrc file.
This is a bug. (#8075) |
Cancel news message |
If you are the author of an article, then the delete button (or the
Edit | Delete Message menu item) cancels the article. As with 4.x, you
can only cancel one article at a time.
Due to several dialog / alert bugs, you won't see the confirmation dialog
("are you sure you want to do this?") or the alert open cancellation. ("message
cancelled."). For now, On Windows and UNIX, look for these messages in
the console window. |
Address Book |
The Personal Address Book is displayed in the left pane. LDAP and additional
address books are not working yet. |
Additional Mail Functionality
-
The multiple POP accounts feature is available for you to try out. To set up
multiple POP accounts, open the mail application and use the Account wizard.
You will need to have identity and server information for the second account.
-
You can use the Address Book window and the Select Address dialog. The
Personal Address Book is working for adding cards, editing cards, and deleting
cards. LDAP and additional address books are not working yet. The data
is stored in a file called "abook.mab". Your Address Book information is used
to auto-complete names entered into the mail compose window.
Available Editor Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Maximize/Minimize Box
Collapase/Expand/Zoom box (Mac) |
All function. |
Apply/Remove bold, italic, underline |
Applies style, doesn't remove. |
Apply/Remove Listing |
Functions. |
Indent/Outdent |
Functions. |
Apply font, font size, font color |
All function. |
Insert Link |
Opens the Insert Link dialog |
Insert Image |
Opens the Insert Image dialog. |
Insert Anchor |
Functions. |
Insert horizontal line |
Functions. |
Spell Check |
Opens the Spell Check dialog on Windows; does not function on Mac OS
and Linux. (bug 6864) |
Up/Down arrows |
Function. |
Left/Right arrows |
Works correctly. |
File menu |
New, Open, Save, Save As, and Quit work correctly. PrintSetup and Print
Preview are not functional. (bugs
11767 and
21432) Printing
Mac OS is currently blocked by bug
21759. |
Edit menu |
Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, and Find work do not work within the browser.
You can, however, cut, copy, and paste within text fields by using keyboard shortcuts.
Clear and Find Again are not functional. |
View menu |
Hide Composition Toolbar and Hide Format Toolbar are not functional.
(bug 11770) |
Insert menu |
Link, Image, Horizontal Line, Table, HTML
Tag, Line Break, and Break Below Images work correctly.
Target is not functional. (bug 11771) |
Format menu |
Font options, size, style, and color work correctly. Paragraph options
work correctly. |
Tools menu |
Spell Check option opens the Spell Check dialog on Windows; does not
function on Mac OS and Linux. (bug 6864) |
Available Gecko Functionality
Functionality |
Description |
Comments |
HTML 4.0 |
Done except for the following:
UI for metadata (bug 1995)
Compact DL, UL, OL (bug 2055)
Character alignment in tables (bug 2212)
UI for HTML Link element (bug 2800)
UI for user stylesheets and alternate stylesheets(bug 6782)
|
|
Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) |
Features 98% done; bug-fixing remains. |
|
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) |
Positioning, tables, selectors done. |
No support is committed for final release, but some features are already
working and will likely be enabled. |
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 0 |
Done. |
|
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 HTML |
90% done. |
|
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 |
JavaScript event model 80% done. |
|
Extensible Markup Language (XML) |
James Clark expat parser in; documents parse.
Simple XLink and HTML Namespaces done. |
|
XML + CSS1 |
Working. |
|
Known Issues
General Browser Issues
-
Clicking the Back or Forward buttons while pages are loading may cause the browser
to quit.
(bug 17932)
-
(Linux only) In 256 colors, loading the test10.html document in Mozilla
will cause a crash.
(bug 11090)
-
Loading problems (possible crash or freeze) sometimes occur on pages that
contain applets.
-
Copying text from the browser window frequently won't work.
(bug 21832)
-
Printing update: Printing (images, HTML widgets, page sources, and web pages)
is working on Windows and Linux. Printing on Mac OS is blocked. (bugs
21759,
7201,
21997, and
21433.)
-
Plugins update: Some file types (.mov, .au) are not understood by mozilla. You cannot
add a new mime type to launch a helper application.
(bugs 20407 and
18656.)
-
Mousewheel scrolling
- Unix: You must have your X server properly configured. For XFree86, add a line to the
Pointer section of your XF86Config files such as "ZAxisMapping 4 5". Also be sure that
the Protocol line is set up correctly for your mouse.
- Windows: If you are using a Logitech wheel mouse, scrolling with the wheel in Mozilla
may not work while Logitech's em_exec program is running. A workaround for the problem
(which may involve upgrading your mouse driver) is documented in bug
20618.
- Mac OS: Mousewheel scrolling (for USB mice) is not yet implemented for Mac OS.
-
The Back button menu does not always list previously visited URLs. (bug 17430)
-
You can't connect to all secure sites (URLs beginning with "https://")
in the M12 release.
-
The Stop button fails intermittently
-
Keyboard shortcuts/command keys are not available for most menu items with
the exception of the following for the mail compose and editor window:
Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-V (paste), Ctrl-Z (undo). and Ctrl-Y(redo) and their
Mac OS equivalents. The old Unix equivalents (using Alt- instead of Ctrl-)
don't work; use Ctrl- .
-
Within Viewer, many options within the Debug & Tools menu items are
not currently working or produce unpredictable results.
Issues with Bookmarks and History
-
Incorrect bookmark behavior can be related to profile problems.
See Issues With Profiles.
-
Drag and drop is not yet implemented,
but you can use cut, copy, and paste to manipulate your bookmarks.
Sidebar Issues
-
To hide the Sidebar, select Sidebar from the View menu. Hiding the Sidebar
works only for the ucrrent window -- new windows will open with the Sidebar
showing. (bug 16516)
-
Mac Os only: You can't add or delete panels in the Sidebar.
(bug 22248)
Issues With Profiles
-
IMPORTANT: All the information regarding profiles is stored in the registry
file. The registry file gets created even if you have used earlier versions
of Mozilla (Apprunner). When you check out a new build, make sure you delete or rename
the following items before you install, build, and run the new executable:
-
Windows mozregistry.dat ( c:\winnt or c:\windows or equivalent),
-
Mac OS Mozilla Registry (System Folder:Preferences),
-
Linux registry (~/.mozilla/)
-
You open Profile Manager with
the command line argument : -ProfileManager. The Profile Manager user interface
appears, supporting creating a new profile, and deleting and renaming existing
profiles. When you finish any of the tasks you can click Exit to quit the
Profile Manager. You can click a Start Communicator button to start Mozilla
with a selected profile. Also, users can migrate 4.5 Communicator profiles
(Windows only, for now).
-
Various command line options to create and manage profiles are:
# mozilla -P <Profilename>
Runs Mozilla with the <Profilename>.
# mozilla -CreateProfile "<Profilename> <ProfileDir>"
Creates a profile (i.e., <Profilename>) and creates a directory
at the specified location i.e., <Profiledir> and launches Mozilla.
# mozilla -CreateProfile <Profilename>
Creates a profile and creates a profile directory under default
profile location.
# mozilla -ProfileWizard
Launches the Create Profile Wizard to create a new profile.
The Create Profile Wizard lets users create a new profile at the default
location or the location of their choice. At the end of the process a profile
is created and marked as the current profile, and Mozilla is launched
with that profile. The wizard is currently just two screens. Mail and News
related preferences/information will be collected by a different application.
# mozilla -ProfileManager
Brings up Profile Manager for managing profiles. Users can
select a profile and click on the Start Communicator button to launch Mozilla
with the chosen profile. The current profile (usually the last used profile)
appears preselected.
# mozilla
Several scenarios:
number of profiles = 0 --> Brings up Create Profile Wizard
number of profiles = 1 --> Launches Mozilla directly
with that profile
number of profiles > 1 --> Brings up Profile Manager
Default profile locations for profile directories are <3 levels
up from the exe location>\Users50, on Windows :Documents:Mozilla:Users50:
on Mac OS, and ~/.mozilla on Linux.
-
Profile Manager (Windows and Linux only): The Rename and Delete buttons
are not working properly.
-
Profile Migration (on Windows only): 4.5 profiles now can be migrated to
5.0. In the process of migration, 4.5 profile information is undisturbed.
In 5.0 the new location for the migrated profiles is the default location
as mentioned in the above paragraph. Migration is functional on Windows
only, but will soon be extended to the Mac OS. (A date for Linux availability
is currently unknown.)
To migrate 4.5 profiles, run Mozilla with the command line option
-installer.
The profile to be migrated is listed as <profilename> - migrate
in the Profile Manager's list box. Users can select a profile to be migrated
and click on the Migrate button. If the migration is done successfully,
the suffix ' - migrate' disappears in the display, marking that profile
as a 5.0 profile. Currently, only the prefs.js file and mail and news folders
are copied in the migration process. Users cannot rename or start Communicator
with a profile that must be migrated. With the changes that went in at
the end of M7, it is required to create a 5.0 profile before using the
migration service. This will be fixed in M8 (so that there is no dependency
on having a 5.0 profile).
-
If the Bookmarks menu has only the Add Current Page and Manage Bookmarks
menu items, and they are not followed by a list of bookmarks, then bookmarking
will not work correctly until you do one of the following:
-
Migrate an old 4.x profile over to Seamonkey, or
-
Create a new profile by following these steps:
-
Remove your current profiles and mozregistry.
-
For Windows, remove the "mozregistry.dat" file in your Windows (or winnt)
directory; also remove the entire "Users50" directory.
-
For Mac OS, remove the "Mozilla Registry" file from your Preferences folder
(System Folder|Preferences|Mozilla Registry). Then remove the "Users50"
folder from the Documents folder that was placed on your hard drive when
you installed Seamonkey (documents|mozilla|Users50).
-
For Linux, remove the .mozilla/ directory.
-
Launch Seamonkey and create your new profile. The menus should now appear
and behave normally.
(See also bug 9505)
Editor Issues
- Loading a remote stylesheet fails, and can cause the editor to crash.
(bug 11859)
- Deleting a table cell can cause the editor to crash.
(bug 21389)
- If you highlight some text and attempt to use the two pulldown menus on the left side of the
toolbar for attribute and font type, the sidebar will interfere with the pulldown menus. (bug 21405)
- The font increase and decrease buttons are not working. (bug 18774)
- The color picker does not work for background and foreground. (bug 21410)
- A number of keyboard accelerators may not work, particularly those contained in the File menu. (bug 13378)
- The editor doesn't launch on the Mac OS unless you give the browser the focus. (bug 9701)
- Mozilla crashes on launch at times. (bug 8849)
- Preview is not working. (bug 9200)
-
The image dialog is not fully implemented. (bugs
9751,
9753,
9754, and
9755)
- The menu and toolbar items don't get disabled. (bug 5563)
- There are some missing menu items. (bug 14342)
-
You must click in a document in order for the caret to reappear.
(bug 9701)
- Mac OS and Linux: The spellcheck dialog does not come up.
(bug 6864)
-
Mac OS only: The editor doesn't launch. (bug 9701)
-
Mac OS only: Toolbar buttons do not appear until mouseover. (bug 13438)
- Linux (Solaris) only: Highlighting doesn't work. (bug 10699)
-
Linux only: Mozilla may crash on launch. (bug 8849)
-
Linux (Solaris) only: Highlighting doesn't work. (bug 10699)
Java Issues
-
If you have installed the latest JRE 1.2 from Sun Microsystems, you may
crash at startup if the Java plugin is present. To fix this, remove the
following dlls from the Plugins folder located in your 4.5 (or later) Communicator
directory: npjava32.dll, npjava12.dll and npjava11.dll.
-
On Linux, Java is not yet implemented.
Javascript Issues
-
document.write fails to write HTML tags and any text written before the
last tag. (bug 11141)
-
JavaScript alert dialogs are not being displayed. (bug 4279)
-
None of the JavaScript window.xxx() functions work with Mozilla windows.
Windows can be opened using the ToolkitCore, but those windows don't play
well with most of the JavaScript properties and methods.
Issues With Small Fonts on Linux
-
If the fonts are too small in your environment, it may be possible to alleviate
this by setting a preference in Mozilla. Add a line like the following
to the preferences file (~/.mozilla/Personal/prefs.js):
user_pref("browser.screen_resolution", 120);
This sets the dpi to 120. If you set the pref to zero (0), Mozilla will
use the X server's dpi value. If the pref is not set, it uses the default
value of 96.
There is some info about setting the X server's DPI value at http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html.
If your fonts are still too small (or too large) after setting the DPI
correctly, you can adjust the font size as follows:
setenv GECKO_FONT_SIZE_FACTOR 1.5
Note that the latter only affects fonts. The screen_resolution preference
affects anything that specifies absolute size (e.g. CSS "pt" points).
Known Issues in Mail and News
International Issues
For updated information on features, fonts, and testing for Internationalization, visit this page.
General:
I18n Engineering and Milestone Tasks document is available
here.
I18n Beta 1 Feature Plan is available here.
I18n Beta 1 Mail/News Functional specifications are available
here.
Localizing Mozilla document.
Bitstream Cyberbit Unicode font for Windows (version 2.0)
is available here.
Read READMEFirst
file for details before downloading the fonts.
Report international bugs: Use Bugzilla.
Questions and comments:
Note: The name of the executable is mozilla.
(At one point during the development, it was apprunner.exe.)
Preferences/Installer:
-
The Mac installer for the M12 binary seems to be
very slow taking an extremely long time to finish.
-
There is very little need to directly edit Preferences
file, prefs.js.
Both profile migration and new profile creation are very easy to accomplish
with the improved Profile Manager. Users who have had trouble setting up
Mail server(s) before should try Edit | Account Setup menu available
in the Messenger window.
-
Mozilla can migrate Communicator 4.x profiles you have on your system.
Choose an existing one made by 4.x from the list and a new one will be
created for Mozilla.
-
The window for profile migration will appear the first time you start M12
build after the installation.
-
If it does not, you can start with the profile manager: mozilla -installer
(Unix & Win). Mac users can start with the Mozilla Profile
Manager file.
-
If you have used an earlier version of Mozilla, we recommend that you delete
the file called mozregistry.dat (Win)/Mozilla registry (Mac)/registry
(Unix) before you run M12 Mozilla. (Don't delete Netscape Registry
file for Mac, which is for Communicator 4.x.). We recommend this procedure
because during an earlier Milestone, i.e. M10, there has been a change
in the way registry works and the old registry prior to M9 will not work
well with builds later than M9. Read the section in the Release Notes called
Files
Used or Created to find out where you can find these files.
-
When you start M12 after having deleted mozregistry.dat or registry,
you
will be asked to create a new profile. If you name an existing profile,
that profile will be used. Otherwise "Default" profile called "mozProfile"
will be created. If this latter happens, you can replace the prefs.js
file in the Default folder with the one from an existing profile directory.
(Note that
the default profile name changed from prefs50.js
(of M8 and earlier) to prefs.js starting with M9.)
-
Note on non-ASCII path names: For
both Profile manager and Mail/News Account setup manager, it would be best
to avoid choosing folder or path names which contain non-ASCII characters
at this point. Internationalization of these is not complete yet. (Mail/News
Account names in non-ASCII display OK, however.)
-
Also read the Installation instructions for your platform carefully in
this Release Notes.
Browser:
-
Performance: There have been more improvements made since M11 in
stability and features that matter to international users. There are, however,
still some crashing bugs left. They tend to be caused by encountering unsupported
feature.. And in that sense, there is good stability in the program if
you can avoid these types of crashes. Generally speaking, however, we believe
M12 is quite usable for international users.
-
Sidebar: You should be able to display non-ASCII names here, e.g.
Related sites. (Note: You may run into a crashing problem if you
use Search dialog and then try to close/open the Sidebar.)
-
Bookmarks: Bookmarks titles support non-ASCII characters. Note:
IE favorites are not imported correctly yet and will nod display non-ASCII
characters well.
-
Font Preferences: Backend work for font
preferences has been completed for M12. The UI for font preferences are
not done yet but font names and sizes can be manipulated by editing prefs.js
file
for
Windows only. Here are some highlights of new font preferences:
-
The font preferences can now be set for 5 generic font families: serif,
sans-serif, monospace, cursive and fantasy
-
Mozilla does not map non-generic font family names such as "Times", "Courier",
and "Arial" to corresponding CJK fonts. Web page designers should use generic
font names if this is the desired result.
-
The font preferences are in principle set for language/script groups (except
for Unicode) rather than for charsets as was done in Communicator 4.x.
-
These preferences will be consulted to select fonts to use in case the
page you are visiting does not have fonts specified.
-
Non-ASCII font names are also supported on Windows at this time. We don't
have UI for this yet but you can play with non-ASCII font names and font
sizes by editing prefs.js. Be careful, however, because prefs.js must be
in UTF-8 if it contains any non-ASCII characters. UTF-8 editor is hard
to find. Japanese font names are known to work on Japanese Windows95/98/NT4.
Help
us by trying out the Korean and Chinese font names under the respective
language Windows. Below is an illustration on how you might edit
prefs.js for font preferences on Japanese Windows:
-
Find your current prefs.js file, and make a backup copy, then
rename the original prefs.js to something like jpprefs.txt.
-
Using a text editor like NotePad, edit jpprefs.txt with the following
templates for font names and sizes:
-
user_pref("font.name.serif.ja", "Font_name_in_JPN");
-- You can set fonts for each of the 5 font types mentioned below.
-
user_pref("font.size.serif.ja", 12);
-
Possible font types: serif, sans-serif, monospace, cursive and
fantasy.
-
Possible language groups are: ja, zh-TW, ko, zh-CN, x-western, x-central-euro,
x-cyrillic, el, tr, x-unicode, zh-TW
-
When inserting font names in Japanese, pay special attention to how the
font names are spelled -- is the alphabet part using full-width Roman?
Is the space half-width or full-width? You can see how the font names are
written by looking in the Control Panel's Font utility program.
-
Now that you have edited jpprefs.txt using Japanese font names,
you should convert the encoding to UTF-8 using the following command line
utility shipped with Mozilla (Win and Unix only) in the same directory
as the mozilla
executable. See below
on details of how to use the conversion utility.
-
nsconv -f Shift_JIS -t UTF-8 jpprefs.txt prefs.js
-
Note: nsconv does not replace an existing
file of the same name -- that's why you should rename the original prefs.js
to something else first.
-
Now Mozilla can read the Japanese font names you
specified and reflect your choice.
-
Any additional Japanese editing should be done on
jpprefs.txt
only.
Then the conversion utility should be used to get the UTF-8 version of
it -- unless you have an editor which can handle UTF-8 data directly.
Note:
On Windows 2000 (currently Beta), editing utilities should be able to save
data into UTF-8. If you know of other such editors, please write to me
and tell me about it.
-
None of these hand-editing would be needed when the font UI is done, which
should be coming soon.
-
Big 5 fonts on Unix: It is now possible to use Big5 fonts with the
suffix big5.et-0.
-
Big 5 fonts and Japanese Kana display on Unix: When you have Big5
fonts like Taipei on your Unix system, due to a Big converter table error,
it leads to non-display of Japanese Kana characters. If you have this problem,
you can get the Japanese display back when you remove the Big5 fonts. See
Bug 21209
for details. This problem was fixed in M13.
-
Form: Form submission of non-ASCII data is working generally. Multipart
file upload is not implemented for M12. This will be fixed in M13.
-
If a web page form uses JavaScript and escape() function on form input
data, at M12 JS returns unicode data instead of the charset which matches
the web page. This will lead to incorrect data submission and failure of
search. Cf. Bug 22594.
-
There is a bug which shows only dots or blank for non-ASCII data input
when the Back button is pressed on the page which resulted by submitting
form data. Cf. Bug 22580.
-
GFX widget/Ender is ON by default. This means that all input
areas in M12 support non-ASCII character input including input using CJK
IMEs. Editor bugs reported for M10 have been mostly fixed in M11. Thus
users should have usable Editor on all platforms. Read the Editor
section below for more information.
-
M12 converter(s): There are no new converters in M12. See
here for a list of all the converters at M12.
-
Unix charset testing: As mentioned in the M7 Release Notes,
the display for the supported charsets except Armenian, Thai, and Vietnamese
should be working now. We would like users to continue to look at
various Unix charsets and file a
bug if a problem is found. The list of the supported charsets at M12
can be found
below.
Please
download the Unix binary and check out our support for these character
sets.
(Note: You need appropriate fonts to display these languages
-- pcf.gz format on Linux. Visit this
site for ISO and Cyrillic BDF fonts, and this
site for multi-byte language fonts. If you want to get the entire international
font set, try one directory above
for this file, intlfonts-1.2.tar.gz . For converting from BDF to
PCF format fonts, use bdftopcf utility. Once installed you need
to update the fontsdir, i.e. mkfontdir, and then rehash the font
path, i.e. xset +fp `pwd` .)
-
View | Character Set menu:
-
Note: The current Character Set menus (including the name of the
menu itself) are temporary and will be replaced soon by an entirely new
single menu. The new menu specs for the Browser have been published here.
The name "Character Set" will also be replaced by "Character Coding".
-
You will notice that there are 7 Character Set Menus in the Browser
window, and 6 in Composer/Editor and Messenger.
-
The first 6 "static" menus with sub-titles such as "ISO" constitute a workaround
for long, non-customizable and non-scrollable menu.
-
The 7th Character Set menu -- found only in the Browser window -- is the
dynamic menu which is under development but will eventually replace the
workaround menu. This is the same menu as the first 6 put together. It
does not scroll under Linux and Windows and so you cannot probably see
the whole list except on Mac, but the dynamic menu is created via a script.
This is first of the series of steps we will be taking to make the Character
Set menu completely dynamic and eventually accommodate new Character sets
via a plug-in directory. The dynamic Character set menu will use the Extensibility
Model as discussed in this
document.
-
Both types of menus should work in M12 and one of them is actually
redundant. This is harmless, however. Character set menus in other components
are still static at this point and you will not see the dynamic menu.
-
View | Character
Set menu Display problem workaround: The
workaround
mentioned in M10 and earlier Release Notes has been incorporated into
M11 and later and thus is no longer necessary.
-
View | Character Set menu usage:
-
You can switch to different Character set upon encountering a page which
does not have a meta charset tag and which is not displaying correctly.
If you happen to have a charset detector ON and if the display is failing,
you need to first turn OFF the detector setting, and then try the Character
Set menu. Otherwise, the charset detector's choice will always predominate
over the manual menu selection. You will not see a checkmark next to the
menu item yet, however.
-
Charset detection modules in the Browser
Menu.
-
The charset detection modules for Chinese, Japanese,
Korean,
East
Asian (CJK), Chinese (Simplified & Traditional Chinese),
Ukrainian,
and Russian are in a menu below the Character Set menu.
-
Russian & Ukrainian: At
present, there are 2 serious bugs for Ukrainian
and Russian modules from working properly.
One of them prevents any character input by Editor once either of
these auto-detect modules is turned on. We recommend against this using
these 2 modules until these bugs are fixed. --> Bugs 17094
& 17103
-- both fixed in M13. )
-
You can select 1 charset detection module at a time. Once selected, the
auto detection for the charsets of language(s) you selected will
be ON until you turn it OFF.
-
The charset detector will be engaged even when you have selected a Character
Set explicitly via the Character Set menu. If you need to override the
effect of the charset detector in effect, choose OFF, and then select a
new Character Set from the Character Set menu. Please use the charset detector
feature for a variety of web pages in the languages of your choice and
let us know how we are doing. File a bug at Bugzilla
or send your comments to netscape.public.mozilla.i18n
or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
Until M10, these charset detectors could be used only by prefs.js
settings. This is no longer necessary since the charset detector menu fulfills
exactly the same function. The menu now controls what gets inserted
into
chardet_name
of:
user_pref("intl.charset.detector", "chardet_name");
If the charset detector is OFF, then chardet_name value will
be empty. As reported before, unit testing also can be done via a utility
called "Detectch.exe" found in the same directory as the "mozilla.exe"
file. If you are interested in modifying the prefs.js for charset detector
modules or use the command line utility, read the usage instruction
here.
-
HTTP charset: Mozilla supports server-generated HTTP charset correctly.
(The order of priority is: HTTP charset > Document Meta Charset > Browser
Menu choice.)
-
View | Page Source: works only partially for different charsets.
-
It works OK:
-
if the page has a correct server-generated HTTP charset or document-based
Meta charset associated with it
-
In other cases, there are failures of correct display. They fall under
2 types of cases:
-
The page has been correctly loaded with the use of a charset detector -->
the source view will load but may not correctly display characters.
-
When none of the conditions above holds and the user has loaded the page
correctly with the manual change of the Character Set menu --> the source
view will load but may not correctly display characters.
-
CJK line breaking: Mozilla's line breaking implements specifications
found in JIS X 4501 with some additional modifications. Read this
news article posted to the newsgroup netscape.public.mozilla.i18n
by Frank Tang for details.
-
CJK basic printing: should be working on M12 on Windows and Mac.
Not verified to be working on Linux -- probably not.
-
EUC-TW bug (Unix): M12 still a bug which produces wrong display
for EUC-TW (Traditional Chinese) pages under Unix only. This problem has
been fixed in M13.
-
Mac: Baltic display:
-
ISO-8859-13: You may experience a problem in Baltic ISO-8859-13
display in that some of the uppercase characters may be missing the diacritical
marks above them showing only the base characters. See Bug
9165.
-
One Workaround:
-
1) Install a Central European script bundle (CE) from this
Apple file. (You need DiskCopy utility to mount this image). After
you mount this disk image, rather than using the Installer, open the System
file directory by double-clicking on it. In it, you will find among others,
CE (script), Slovak (keyboard layout), and slovensk (keyboard layout).
Drag these files to your current System Folder. Mac OS will then place
them in the right places.
-
2) Next, get the fonts for Central European from this
Apple file. Once you mount this image file with DiskCopy, you will
find a number of CE fonts. Drag and drop them onto your System Folder.
Mac OS will then place them in an appropriate folder.
-
3) After steps 1 and 2 are completed, re-start your Mac. You should now
see ISO-8859-13 (also ISO-8859-4) characters correctly.
-
Central European ISO-8859-2 display: There seems to be a Mac bug
-- some 8-bit range characters display as "?" even though a correct font
exists on the system. See Bug 18095.
-
Mac: In earlier milestones, Mac Japanese display had mixed fonts
from other Asian language fonts. Font display for CJK should now be consistent
using a single font family for native characters.
-
Java: Java Plug-ins work OK on Windows.
-
To get Java working on Mozilla, you need to take some extra steps as described
below.
-
First get the International version of JRE 1.2.2 or later from Javasoft.
We recommend using JRE1.3 (Beta at this point) for improved Java support.
(JRE package are not included in Mozilla distribution.) JRE packages
are distributed for JDK releases and Beta version downloading requires
registration first. Install the package on your Windows. We find that JRE
1.3 Beta can run more applets than JRE 1.2.2 plugin files and are therefore
recommended. Plugin files are also much smaller in size in the latter version.
-
Note to CJK Windows 95/8 users: If
you want to use Java on these Asian Windows 95/98, you must get the international
version of JRE which has i18n.jar file needed for conversion
from native charsets to Unicode -- otherwise, Mozilla will crash when trying
to start. NT4 users will have no crash of this type. If you are CJK Win95/98
users and are not using the international version of JRE and are experiencing
startup crashes, then remove the 3 .dll files from the plugins
directory
and live without Java until an international version of JRE is installed.
See discussion in Bug 21305
for details.
-
Create a directory named plugins in the same directory where the
mozilla.exe resides.
-
Copy 3 files, npjava11.dll, npjava12.dll, and npjava13.dll,
from the JRE's bin directory into the plugins directory you
created in step 2.
-
Check the Java Plug-in Control Panel from Windows Start | Program
menu. The following settings (no others) must be checked.
-
Basic: Java Plugin, Java Console (optional), Cache Jar in memory
-
Detailed/Advanced: Use Java Plugin as default, Just in time Compiler
is on
-
Proxy: use the browser setting
-
Certificates: (none)
-
Due to a few bugs, some applets simply will not run. Some string display
applets do run and so far we have found none can actually display non-ASCII
strings. If you have specific applets which deal with string display, write
your finding to netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
Editor: For IME specifications, see this
document by Tague Griffith. (Current eidtor i18n engineers are Frank
Tang & Erik van der Poel.)
-
General: There have been a
number of fixes in M12 to make editing easier for the user. The
user will find editing tasks generally much improved in M12.
-
Filing Editor bugs. If you are filing
editing related bugs, please CC the following people depending on the category
of bugs you are reporting:
-
For all the Window keyboard input/ IME related bugs, add
-
buster@netscape.com,ftang@netscape.com,beppe@netscape.com, to the CC list
-
For all the Mac keyboard input/ IME related bugs, add
-
brade@netscape.com,ftang@netscape.com,beppe@netscape.com, to the CC list
-
For all the Linux keyboard input/ IME related bugs, add
-
akkana@netscape.com,erik@netscpe.com,ftang@netscape.com,beppe@netscape.com,
to the CC list
-
For all the cross-platform keyboard input/ IME related bugs, add
-
buster@netscape.com,brade@netscape.com,akkana@netscape.com,ftang@netscape.com,beppe@netscape.com,
to the CC list
-
Copy/paste now I18n-friendly: Basic
intra-application copy/paste is now working in all
areas of Mozilla for non-ASCII strings. You can copy from Browser
or Messenger viewing window and paste into all Edit fields within the application.
This should work for all languages we cover at present. Please check this
out in M12 and let us know if there is any problem. Note: The inter-application
copy/paste is working partially in M12 -- a full fix is scheduled for M13.
-
You can copy/cut and paste within the same application
-
within the same same text area
-
from one text area to another text area (e.g. from HTML to Plain Text editor
text area)
-
from one text field to another text area under HTML Mail Composer (e.g.
from Mail compose subject header to body text area)
-
Known bugs: Copy/cut and paste for non-ASCII string is not working
in the following inter-application cases. These cases are being
worked on and we should get this resolved in M13. See 8427
for details. The following paints a general idea of where copy/paste may
not be working currently. Note that in some text areas these functions
may be working at M12 anyway.
-
>From Mozilla to another application -- if the other application does not
support Unicode clipboard in the target Edit field. (Note: It does not
help the matter if the platform does not support Unicode clipboard, e.g.
Win95/98.)
-
>From another application to Mozilla -- if the platform does not support
Unicode clipboard. This should work on WinNT4/2000 but probably will run
into a problem Win95/98 in some cases.
-
CJK IMEs: Most major bugs in basic operations of CJK IMEs
have been fixed but there are a number of smaller bugs. They should be
suitable for fairly heavy use now.
-
Basic IME support on Unix: We test Japanese input under Red Hat
6.0 + kinput2 + wnn4. We need your help on
testing other Unix platforms and other language IMEs!
-
Help test (Japanese) IME on Unix!: We need the following kinds of
testing for Japanese IME and others on Unix. Please send your comments
to netscape.public.mozilla.i18n
or file a bug using Bugzilla
Bug Management System for Mozilla.
-
Testing on other platforms -- our reference platform was Red Hat 6.0.
-
Testing other XIM-based Japanese IMEs (both public domain and commercial
ones such as Wnn6+xwnmo) to see how we are doing. We used kinput2 + wnn4
as our testing environment. We need input from people using other IMEs
and servers. Write to us also if you can confirm other IMEs are working.
If there are special conditions to be followed, include that information
also.
-
Chinese and Korean IMEs on Unix: We would also like to hear from
users of IMEs for Chinese and Korean IMEs. Write to: netscape.public.mozilla.i18n
about your findings.
-
So far we have received reports that XCIN for Traditional Chinese
works with Mozilla. For XCIN, see this
English page for more info.
-
Also internally we could get one Korean IME to work. For Korean XIME general
info, visit this
English page by Jungshik Shin. For hanIM specific info, visit
this Korean page.
-
CJK IME bugs:
-
On all platforms:
-
We don't see any crashing bugs at M12.
-
On Unix: Unix IME is fairly good shape though
bugs remain but it is quite usable in M12. You need to be aware of
the following bugs, however.
-
The over-the-spot position of the input area:
At
M11, the input baseline was not well-aligned vertically when you
first start inputting character. You could not see the characters well
until the first input has been committed. This problem was fixed in M12.
-
With kinput2, there was a bug for M11 in which the
input module window often covers the input line. This bug was fixed in
M12 except for the New Mail Composer window's body text window. This latter
bug was fixed in M13. Cf. Bug 22326.
You can move the window if this bothers you.
-
Form Password field input bug:
-
Due to a bug, the form password input is not concealed completely when
you engage CJK IMEs -- you can bring up the conversion candidate window
and see what characters you are typing. To avoid this bug, turn off the
IME and then input a password. Only this mode will work OK for the password
field. The Half-width Alphanumeric mode (e.g. Japanese IME) normally works
like the direct input mode but for this bug, it is not effective and reveals
the input when the candidate window is brought up. Only ASCII input mode
should be available in this field. See Bug 16940
for details.
-
Other bugs:
-
M12 has an annoying bug in Editor and Mail Composer
where if you use ALT + NUM Pad to input Latin 1 accented characters, the
input character gets placed one position to the left of the current cursor
position. There is also similar bugs reported for reply/quoted msg in Mail
Composer. See Bugs 22206
& 22205.
-
Notable bug fixes:
-
CJK IME force commit function has been enabled in some areas. For
example, choosing a style menu item or inserting the cursor into other
parts of the edit field will force commit.
-
Win95/98 Dead Keys on certain keyboards (e.g. US-International)
is finally functional.
-
AltGr combination should now work for international keyboards. There
is one glitch remaining -- i.e. a menu will open if the key you happening
to be using with AltGr key is also a menu shortcut key.
-
XIME status window position now gets refreshed as new input is being
made.
-
Saving with Editor Character Set menu: On a new document, change
the encoding to the one you would like to save the document in and then
use the File | Save as menu to save the edited document in
that character set. Bugs or comments to: Bugzilla
or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
Here are some known bugs.
-
Now the document will be saved in a charset you specify via the Character
Set menu. (Note: This behavior will change when the International Editor
UI specs are implemented.)
-
Currently this menu does not reload a document. It can only be used to
save a document into a different charset at the save time. This menu will
be re-worked extensively later.
-
Summary of what has been enabled up to M 12:
-
CJK IMEs on Windows, Mac and Unix.
-
CJK force commit is functional in some areas -- there are some more
tasks to be done.
-
Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Windows: Please
file
a bug if you find a problem in your language or keyboard.
-
Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Mac: Roman Australian,
Brazilian, British, Canadian-CSA, Canadian-ISO, Canadian-French, Dutch,
dv-Dvorak, dq-Dvorak-Qwerty, Finnish, Flemish, French, French-numerical,
German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Spanish-ISO, Swedish, Swiss French,
Swiss German, Cyrillic Bulgarian, Cyrillic-Qwerty, Russian, Ukrainian.
Localizability:
-
General: One of the key features of Mozilla is that it is relatively
easy to localize menus and dialogs UI into any language. See the framework
section below for a brief discussion of guidelines. Commercial browsers
don't often get localized into languages with smaller number of speakers.
If you want to see a fast, next generation browser in your own language,
Mozilla offers a
great chance to make it a reality.
-
Voluntary localization projects: Currently 12 voluntary language
projects are going and more are likely to join. If you're interested in
localizing Mozilla into your favorite language, this
page explains it all. Current projects are: Bosnia, Brazilian, Catalan,
Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Norwegian, Japanese, Polish, and
Thai. Some of them already have published M12
kits. Check out the Mozilla
L10n How-to Page.
-
Localization framework:
-
We have published a guideline for localization. Anyone interested in localizing
Mozilla into a native language should read this
document carefully.
-
Here are some basic ideas to keep in mind when localizing Mozilla. For
more details, read this
document.
-
Do not localize .xul files directly. All localizations must take
place in corresponding .dtd files or property files.
-
Most localizable strings have now been extracted from .xul into
.dtd
(or property files) files. The .dtd files are found under
../chrome/component_name/locale/en-US directory. They match the names
of the corresponding .xul files which are placed under:../chrome/component_name/content/default
directory.
(Note: Some samples of property files, which can also be localized, are
found under ../res directory but there are currently only a few
examples of this type of files.)
-
Translaters need not worry about this, but if you create a .xul
file then you need to extract localizable string into a corresponding .dtd
file.
(If you're creating Mozilla UI via a script rather than by a static .xul
file, then you need to extract them into a property file.) To extract .XUL
entities into DTD files for localization, read this
document.
-
XUL/XML/RDF files assume the default charset to be in UTF-8. If you change
UI strings to your favorite language, they should show OK as long as the
localized files use UTF-8 charset. (You can change menus to Japanese, for
example, in ..chrome/navigator/locale/en-US/navigator.dtd file using
the method suggested above and then convert the DTD file to UTF-8.) The
menu items generally cannot be in languages your system does not support,
e.g. no Japanese menu for US Windows is possible at the moment.
-
All non-ASCII .dtd and .property files must be in UTF-8 encoding,
which is Mozilla's default encoding for resource files. You do not need
to explicitly mark the resource files with this encoding, Mozilla will
assume that they are in UTF-8 if there are no charset tags.
-
In summary:
-
Make backup copies of all .dtd files you will be localizing
-
Rename your .dtd files to something which have a language identifying prefix,
e.g. jpnavigator.dtd for navigator.dtd.
-
Edit these language specific .dtd files with an editor which can handle
your language.
-
Once translation is done, use an UTF-8 conversion utility to turn jpnavigator.dtd
into UTF-8 encoded navigator.dtd. If you have an UTF-8 capable
editor -- as you might on Windows 2000 --, you can edit these files directly
and save them into UTF-8 encoding. See below for how to use Mozilla's character
encoding converter, nsconv.
-
UTF-8 conversion utility:
-
Use convenient converter utilities such as "uniconv"
(for Windows and Unix) or "native2ascii" utility included in the latest
JDK.
-
Mozilla's nsconv conversion utility has been enhanced by "jonas.utterstrom@vittran.norrnod.se"--
it now supports charset aliases: The original nsconv is by the courtesy
of Frank Tang. nsconv is
installed in the same directory as your mozilla executable. You can use
any encoding names recognizable by Mozilla and their aliases checked into
the source in using this utility. Here's the basic command line for using
this utility:
-
Usage schema --any one of the following:
-
nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname
source_filename new_filename
-
nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname
source_filename > new_filename
-
nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname
< source_filename > new_filename
-
You can use the charset names you see within the parentheses of the
Character Set menu for source_charsetname and
target_charsetname,
e.g. iso-8859-1, Shift_JIS, Big5, EUC-KR, etc.
-
The utility does not seem to replace an existing
file with the new output file. If you have an existing file with the same
name as the intended output, first delete the existing file. Or else output
into a new file with a different name.
-
DTD/XML encoding definition supported -- thus you can use
charsets other than UTF-8 as the resource file charset, but using charset
other than UTF-8 is not recommended for Mozilla localization. We assume
UTF-8 as default. Cf. Bug
4431.
Mail/News (Testing done on Windows and Linux only):
-
Performance: Mail is now very much usable. It is not yet scalable
to heavy use for those handling several hundred messages per day or those
who have over a few thousand IMAP messages in an account. But for moderate
users of mail, Mozilla is very very close to a usable mail client for daily
use. M12 would be a very good chance to get your Mozilla experience going
and participate in making it better for the upcoming 1st Beta. In addition
to performance improvement with server interactions, improvements in preference
settings with Mail Account Setup have been great in M12.
-
Preferences file: prefs.js (Note: Up to
M8, the Preferences file was named prefs50.js. This file name is
prefs.js
instead for all later Milestones.)
-
General info for M12:
-
Once you create a profile via the Profile Manager, the rest is very
easy to set up with the use of Edit | Account Setup ... menu
in the Messenger window. Read this section also
for general preferences issues in addition to looking at Mail specific
preferences.
-
Mail Account Setup manager: If you want to learn more about how
to setup various mail and news servers, and multiple mail mail accounts,
read this
document. The future Mail Account Setup specs also have been published
here.
-
Downloading POP msgs & IMAP headers :
-
The performance in these areas has further improved since M11.
-
Note: some POP servers don' t handle multiple, simultaneous accesses
to the same account well. In such cases, keep only one connection alive
to use it trouble-free.
-
Displaying Mail links with Browser: Choose Browser's Debug |
URI Dispatching | Enable Dispatching. When you do this, URL links in
mail messages will not be shown in the Messenger window but by the Browser
window. In the near future, this will be the default behavior and links
will not be shown inline.
-
How various mail-related international functions are working at M12:
-
Address Book: now supports Non-ASCII (including CJK) input, editing
and display. The following features are working.
-
Non-ASCII Input into card fields
-
List View pane -- proper international sorting
-
Each card view pane -- displays non-ASCII strings
-
Can re-edit existing cards with non-ASCII entries.
-
New message button -- quotes non-ASCII names correctly
-
Composer Address Picker -- now select non-ASCII names correctly.
-
Address auto-completion is working partially. If an Address Book
entry contains non-ASCII characters, they are now displayed correctly.
However, matching try with non-ASCII characters don't work with M11.
-
Importing 4.5 or later AB entries: Address book entries import from
Communicator 4.5 or later is now possible. Just export your Address Book
entries using Communicator 4.5 or later. This will create a file with .ldif
extension.
Import this file using File | Import menu from the Address
Book. (Note: This will not work with .ldif files created by Communicator
4.0x versions.)
-
New Msg button on Address Book entries: works and will import any
language name into the "To: " header for new mail correctly.
-
Address Picker on Mail Composer window: works for all languages
we support and displays all non-ASCII names correctly.
-
Bugs:
-
M12 has a bug which prevents new Address Book folder creation.
-
On Unix, sorting in Address Book is not working well.
-
Multi-lingual mail viewing: This is working
on all platforms.
-
Multilingual viewing is working on IMAP, POP3 and NNTP servers as long
as the messages contain properly MIME-encoded headers and body with correct
charset parameters.
-
View | Character Set menu is currently not working to override wrong MIME
charset label, or view msgs which have no MIME charset (except for Latin
1) specified.
-
If you have a multilingual font or several fonts which together cover the
Unicode ranges (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean fonts + Pan-European fonts),
we use them in displaying mail messages and headers for all the languages
we support. We pay attention to the charset parameter in the Content-Type
header and switch to an appropriate font. The Character Set menu is not
needed to switch to different language views unless the message you're
viewing is incorrectly labeled. If you would like a basic mono-weight multi-lingual
font, you can get Bitstream Cyberbit font 2.0 here.
Mail font settings are also affected by prefs.js setting as described
above in the Browser section..
-
Earlier there were a few bugs which prevented Mozilla from displaying Thai
(Windows-874 or TIS-620) mail messages. They have been fixed and now you
can view mail messages sent in these encodings.
-
Viewing News: is working. Multilingual news articles viewing works
if they have correct MIME charsets indicated in the articles. Be warned,
however, that newsgroups postings are not always MIME-compliant and this
could defeat our charset honoring mechanism.
-
Viewing non-ASCII attachments: generally working but there are some
bugs.
-
Attachments should be viewable if they are of the same charset as the main
body of the mail or if it has explicit charset parameter in the attachment
headers. If an attachment lacks charset parameter info and if its
charset does not match that of the main body, that attachment cannot be
viewed currently even when the Character menu is changed to match the charset
of the attachment. A charset detector as discussed above can work on attachments
without explicit charset information -- if it is turned on via the Browser
menu.
-
Multiple attachments in different languages: can now be viewed without
changing the charset menu if each attachment's header contains a correct
charset parameter. If you send a message from Mozilla with multiple attachments
and if each attachment has a meta charset tag, Mozilla will create a content-type
charset parameter for each attachment from the meta-tag information.
-
Latin 1 attachment to ASCII msg: If an attachment contains raw 8-bit
Latin 1 characters and is attached to a mail body with ASCII tag, Mozilla
does not display these attachments correctly. We fixed this problem in
M13 by assuming ISO-8859-1 instead of ASCII as the message charset. See
Bugs 20997
& 22209
for details.
-
Japanese attachments and auto-detection:
-
The auto-detection module set for the Browser via its Auto-Detect
menu will also detect the charset of mail attachments. See above
on how to set an charset detection module.
-
Currently there is a bug which corrupts Japanese EUC-JP attachment display.
To work around this problem, we have put in a mail specific charset detector
which only works in Messenger under Windows only. (Note: Eventually this
detector will be removed when the EUC bug is fixed.) When this is set,
this detector rather than the Browser detector will be used in Messenger.
This detector will be ON even when the Browser detector is OFF. For those
wishing to view Japanese EUC files attached to mail messages, we recommend
that this workaround be put in place. There is no UI for this but this
is how you can use it:
-
In the pres.js file, insert the following line:
-
user_pref("mail.charset.detector", "jaclassic"); <-- this
is basically a detector module used for Communicator 4.x.
-
Printing: Basic printing is enabled. Currently it is rather primitive.
Headers don't seem to be printed -- only body text.
-
View | Character Set menu and thread pane reloading:
-
The menu change causes the thread pane to reload properly. This makes it
possible to display non-MIME-encoded headers which don't match the current
Character Set menu setting. Headers, body, and attachments without
MIME charset information may not be displayed properly, however, even if
the Character Set menu is changed.
-
IMAP Latin 1 folder name: displays OK. Multi-byte folder names (e.g.
CJK) don't display well yet.
-
International Sorting for Thread pane headers: now works well
in the Subject headers on all platforms with some problems still
left on certain locales. CJK characters are not displayed correctly in
the Sender field and therefore cannot be tested. Sorting should
be done according to the sort default for the language of your operating
system. Date/Time sorting is also working as it should.
-
Linux sorting:
-
There seems to be a problem with Latin 1 sort -- this is under investigation.
-
Also sorting is working for some Japanese locale names but not others.
It might have to do with locale name aliasing. This problem is under investigation.
-
International Date/Time format: now works for NT4, Win9x,
and Mac for all locales. The format will be used according to your OS's
date/time format setting.
-
Sending Latin 1 & Japanese attachments/pages:
-
File | Send Page is now working in M11 in addition to attaching
a local file to a message.
-
Note that Mozilla will append a charset parameter to the attachment headers
if the page contains a meta charset tag.
-
Send-related bugs at M12: Most of the send-related bugs in M11 have
been fixed. We still have some new bugs in M12, however.
-
If you reply/quote, under Plain Text send option, a message which has an
attachment bearing a meta-charset document tag, Mozilla may crash. See
Bug 22655.
-
If you reply/quote a page containing an attachment with frames, it may
lead to a crash. See 18312.
-
Using HTML entities under an encoding which does not contain the characters
represented by them, e.g. Latin 1 accented characters under Japanese encoding,
leads to a crash. Bug 22315.
-
Forward/inline of certain plain text mail msgs lead to loss of linebreaks
in the quoted text. See Bug 21869.
-
When replying under HTML send-option to a message which includes an HTML
attachment, an error occurs and the mail cannot be sent. See Bug 21682.
-
Sending messages in other languages: View | Character Set menu for
New Mail Compose window is working for sending mail for many additional
languages. Switch to the charset you want to compose a message in and then
compose the message. You will not see a checkmark
next to the menu item yet, however. Let us know how we are in sending
messages in other languages. Send your report to: netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
-
Composing Latin 1 mail messages:
-
In sending 8-bit range characters with HTML mail under Latin encodings,
starting with M11, we will generally use 8-bit characters rather than HTML
entities. However, certain special characters not in the chosen encoding
will be turned into CERs (so-called HTML entities) or NCRs (numeric character
references).
-
In sending 8-bit range characters with Plain Text mail, we will generally
use 8-bit characters rather than QP-encoded characters. Those characters
not in the chosen encoding, e.g. the EURO under ISO-8859-1 is currently
turned into a "?" symbol. We are considering more user-friendly spec for
this currently.
-
General Fallback strategy for sending characters not found in the chosen
encoding:
-
CERs or NCRs will be used in HTML mail.
-
"?" will substitute for non-existing characters under Plain Text send option.
In future, we may offer an option to send in UTF-8 or some other encoding
which support the characters in question.
-
Domain Name completion: is now working. An user ID only input will
be automatically completed with the default domain when the Enter key is
pressed.
-
Message Send Status summary for Latin 1 and Japanese:
No indicates that the functionality is not working well.
Message send feature
|
Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1)
|
Japanese (iso-2022-jp)
|
Header (subject, address)
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Body - HTML
|
Yes (8-bit characters are sent as is w/o entities except
when the chosen charset does not contain the character)
|
Yes
|
Body - plain
|
Yes (8-bit characters are sent as is w/o QP. When the chosen
charset does not contain the character, "?" is used in its place currently.)
|
Yes
|
Reply/forward header
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Reply/forward body html
|
Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS (but some bugs) |
Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS (but some bugs) |
Reply/forward body plain
|
Yes - IMAP,
POP, News. (but some
bugs) |
Yes - IMAP,
POP, News (but some bugs) |
Send/View Attachment(s)
|
Yes (Send - local file and web page) |
Yes (Send - local file and web page.) |
Copy/paste into headers and body
|
Yes (accented characters copy OK) |
Yes (from headers to body in HTML composer only) No
(from body to headers) |
Notes on Composing Latin 1 and Japanese Mail messages:
-
Composing Latin 1 Mail:
-
Copying/pasting accented characters into the headers and body works
from anywhere within the application where copy is enabled, e.g.
Messenger Mail window, Browser window. You can also copy Latin 1 data from
Communicator 4.x into Mozilla.
-
Keyboard input into headers (e.g. subject) also works for accented characters.
Using the English keyboard for Latin 1 high-bit input, ALTGr + 0+Number
Keypad method works, e.g. Right ALT key + 0232.
-
Make sure to switch the View | Character Set to your chosen
Character set name before you send out a message.
-
Basic MIME compliance is there: Header Q encoding, and Body QP encoding
for accented characters.
-
Composing Japanese mail:
-
Basic Japanese input works for body. Japanese input/copying into
the headers and body also work from within Mozilla. You can also copy JPN
data from Communicator 4.x into Mozilla.
-
Mail goes out in ISO-2022-JP. Header is B-encoded. (The Kanji-in
escape sequence is that of JISX0208-1990/83. )
-
Make sure to switch the View | Character Set to Japanese (ISO-2022-JP)
before you send out a message.
-
Sending other charset mail -- is enabled.
Please try out these new charsets! For example, Central European, Cyrillic,
Greek, UTF-8, Thai, etc.
-
Though the mail text body can sense what keyboard you have selected and
will switch font accordingly, there may be mapping bugs with some international
keyboards. If you find a bug with your charset/language, please file
it here.
Mail/News (for Mac)
-
We don't currently test Mac for international features. Though we cannot
vouch for accuracy, many of our Windows/Linux features should be working
on Mac also.
List of Charset Converters available
at M12:
Single-byte:
-
Western (ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, MacRoman), Central European
(ISO-8859-2, Windows-1250, MacCE), South European/Esperanto/Maltese
(ISO-8859-3), Baltic/North European (ISO-8859-4, Windows-1257),
Baltic/North
European (ISO-8859-13), Cyrillic (ISO-8859-5, Windows-1251,
KOI8-R, ISO-IR-111 aka ECMA-Cyrillic, MacCyrillic, CP-866), Arabic
(ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial
build later) , Greek (ISO-8859-7, Windows-1253, MacGreek), Hebrew
(ISO-8859-8 aka Windows-1255) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial
build later), Turkish (ISO-8859-9 aka Latin5, Windows-1254, MacTurkish),
Nordic/North
European (ISO-8859-10 aka Latin6), Celtic (ISO-8859-14),
Western
(ISO-8859-15),
Armenian (ARMISCII-8), Thai (TIS-620 aka Windows-874),
Ukrainian
(KOI8-U, MacUkrainian), Vietnamese (VISCII, Windows-1258, VIET-VPS,
VIET-TCVN5712),
other Mac encodings (MacCroatian, MacIcelandic,
MacRomanian).
Multi-byte:
-
Japanese (Shift_JIS, EUC-JP), Traditional Chinese (Big5,
EUC-TW), Simplified Chinese (GB2312), Unicode (UTF-8, UCS-2,
UCS-4), Korean (EUC-KR), Western
(T.61-8bit) - support this for LDAP v2 and X.500.
Stateful:
-
Japanese (ISO-2022-JP), Unicode
(UTF-7, IMAP4-modified-UTF7- Needed for IMAP folder names)