Proposal: Unpacked _locales

[erosman]

Proposal: Unpacked _locales

Simply an idea for further discussion

Background

Almost all free extensions maintain their _locales through user contributions. In most cases, it is not practical to maintain and pack 100s of locales with the extension.
The idea is to provide an alternative method of providing locales where users can upload their preferred individual locale, to be used by the extension.

Benefits

• Smaller extensions (for developers, browsers, & web stores)
• Easier maintenance
• Users can create & use their own locales

Requirements

Subject to a consensus between bowsers to provide the feature ...

• Additional extension storage for the user locales e.g. _userLocales
• Browsers to internally combine _locales & _userLocales
• A method to upload messages.json to the above storage
  • It can be an API user-interface via the extension
  • It can be a browser user-interface under the extension management

[xeenon]

This is mostly out of scope for this group — as this relates to packaging and distribution — this can also be done with browser implementations today. The API aspect is the only area that could be considered here, but I'm not sure there is any demand for this support from users.

I would be neutral to opposed for Safari.

[erosman]

This is mostly out of scope for this group — as this relates to packaging and distribution — this can also be done with browser implementations today.

@xeenon Can a user install a messages.json locale for an installed extension with the current API?

To clarify ...

• An extension is packed with _locale/en/messages.json only
• de/messages.json is available to download from a repository
• Can a user add the above to his/her installed extension?

[xeenon]

This is mostly out of scope for this group — as this relates to packaging and distribution — this can also be done with browser implementations today.

@xeenon Can a user install a messages.json locale for an installed extension with the current API?

To clarify ...

• An extension is packed with _locale/en/messages.json only
• de/messages.json is available to download from a repository
• Can a user add the above to his/her installed extension?

That is not possible today, but also something any browser could add UI to allow. I don't see a benefit for an API to allow the extension to do.