Packaging Firefox extensions (Finnish spell checking)

[Ville-Pekka Vainio]

Hi all,

I've been packaging Finnish spell checking support for Fedora (see 
http://voikko.sourceforge.net/) and now I've packaged a Firefox extension 
which uses the Voikko library to do spell checking in Finnish. My initial 
testing package can be found here: 
http://vpv.fedorapeople.org/packages/mozvoikko/

What do you think about packaging Firefox extensions, are they allowed and 
would someone be interested in reviewing this package if I submitted it?

Beagle-firefox is probably the only Firefox extension packaged currently in 
Fedora and I made my package so that it matches the locations etc. used in 
that package.

Of course the extensions can be installed from Mozilla's web site as well, but 
especially with this extension there would be a couple of benefits if it was 
shipped as an RPM: It can be built against the libvoikko and libmalaga 
libraries available in Fedora and it uses the Finnish data files available in 
Fedora (malaga-suomi-voikko).

The extension version which probably will be shipped from Mozilla's web site 
needs to have the libraries and the data files compiled in it, because it 
can't assume much from the target system. Thus it will probably be much 
larger (the uncompressed data files seem to be around 8 megabytes) whereas 
the extension built to call the stuff already in the system takes around 70 
kilobytes (uncompressed). Also, if the extension is installed via Firefox 
from Mozilla's site, it will only be installed for the single user, so if the 
system has for example 5 users and all of them install the extension for 
themselves, the difference will be even bigger.


-- 
Ville-Pekka Vainio