2009-04-12, 18:25
I have written a script so when the user startup xbmc for the first time, the user will be prompted for a menu to select the desired language to use.
The current situation with XBMC (internationalize) is that an end user without knowledge of English will not able to use XBMC (with default settings) without any help. In my view, this is not good enough.
My script does not attempt to solve it, instead I would like to deliver a message that it can and should be done to improve experiences for non-English speaking users.
Screen shot:
I have tested on Ubuntu 8.10 with XBMC svn @19419. (found some bugs as a co-product of the script, which I will file tickets)
To have a demo Ubuntu 8.10 system you should:
The current situation with XBMC (internationalize) is that an end user without knowledge of English will not able to use XBMC (with default settings) without any help. In my view, this is not good enough.
My script does not attempt to solve it, instead I would like to deliver a message that it can and should be done to improve experiences for non-English speaking users.
Screen shot:
I have tested on Ubuntu 8.10 with XBMC svn @19419. (found some bugs as a co-product of the script, which I will file tickets)
To have a demo Ubuntu 8.10 system you should:
- Set up a proper font
You need a font that can display words/characters in user's desired language.
For Chinese (simpled or traditional), you can try
This will install wqy fonts and overwrite the arial.ttf installed by xbmc.Code:sudo apt-get install ttf-wqy-zenhei
sudo cp -a /usr/share/fonts/truetype/wqy/wqy-zenhei.ttf /usr/share/xbmc/media/Fonts/arial.ttf
- install autoexec script
copy from http://code.google.com/p/xbox-remote/sou...utoexec.py and save it to
Code:/usr/share/xbmc/autoexec.py
- install select-language script
copy from http://code.google.com/p/xbox-remote/sou...startup.py and save it to
Code:/usr/share/xbmc/scripts/select-language.py
- install welcome.xml
save the following code to /usr/share/xbmc/language/English/welcome.xml
Code:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!--$Revision: 19319 $-->
<strings>
<!-- strings 30000 thru 30999 reserved for plugins and plugin settings -->
<string id="30000">English</string>
<!-- strings 31000 thru 31999 reserved for skins -->
<!-- strings 32000 thru 32999 reserved for scripts -->
</strings>
save the following code to /usr/share/xbmc/language/Chinese (Simple)/welcome.xml
Code:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!--$Revision: 19319 $-->
<strings>
<!-- strings 30000 thru 30999 reserved for plugins and plugin settings -->
<string id="30000">简体中文</string>
<!-- strings 31000 thru 31999 reserved for skins -->
<!-- strings 32000 thru 32999 reserved for scripts -->
</strings>
- Remove user setttings
Code:rm -rf ~/.xbmc
- Startup XBMC in respawn mode
copy from http://code.google.com/p/xbox-remote/sou...rt-xbmc.py and save it to start-xbmc.py. Run it with
Code:python start-xbmc.py