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All right, all right, we said no new features in a stable release... Lots of talks on this.
I swear though this one will not create any issue but help spread Joomla! even more. 

For the first time in Joomla! history, a GSOC project makes its way into a current release!

This was worth our congratulations to Javier Gomez (Open Source Matters) who proposed the project and brought it to its logical conclusion. (He has cool mentors too... )

The new feature will be available in the 2.5.7 and 3.0 releases.

First a little history, as this project would not have succeeded without these steps:

A. Sam Moffat (Production Leadership Team) introduced in 1.6 the possibility to update extensions by adding in the package a simple code and some xml files on a server, one of them linking to the updated package.

B. The Translation Teams wanted to allow this functionnality for their language packs, but this was reserved, on one hand, to communities owning servers and, on the other hand, required manually creating and updating the custom xmls. Complex and time consuming...

C. Here comes Jan Erik Zassenhaus (German Translation Team Coordinator). Jan created a cron job picking the last available language packs from the Registered Translations repository on joomlacode.org and creating from the list the necessary xmls, automatically.

D. Mark Dexter (Production Leadership Team) then made a crontab to run each night and update the xmls on update.jomla.org.
--> Since 2.5.4, Language packs who follow the necessary format are proposed for update in Joomla! administration. This is how the xml looks like: http://update.joomla.org/language/translationlist.xml

Remained to use these xmls to propose directly to users the possibility to install any compliant language pack through the Extension Manager. This has now been accomplished by Javier Gomez as a GSOC project (which also includes a second part to let users install any language when installing a new Joomla instance. We will for sure get that second part in the 3.x series).

How does it work? Can't be simpler...
1. A new tab is now displayed in the Extension Manager: Install Languages.
When clicking on it (and if internet is available), Joomla! will download the list of languages and display them in the Manager. The packs proposed are only the ones compatible with the Joomla! version running.

2. Then just tick on the language(s) you want to install, click on the Toolbar Install button and here we are.

3. A new Toolbar icon in the Language Manager redirects to the Install Languages Manager.

A  few things to remember:

1. Do not try to install too many lang packs at the same time. This to avoid transfer issues on some hosts.
2. If you do not find the language you look for in the list, then it means:
--- either that this language pack is not available for this version of Joomla (you may want to contact the Translation Team Coordinator for this language. Contacts for 2.5 Coordinators are here: http://community.joomla.org/translations/joomla-16-translations.html  and/or download and older pack from the links provided on the same page and Install the normal way);
--- or that you already have installed that language and it will not show in this Manager, but in the Update Manager if a new pack is available for your version of Joomla;
3. Purge and Find Languages will clear and update the list.

NB: Did you know that in the last weeks we added 3 registered languages? Hindi, Esperanto and Vietnamese got in.
Time for 1.5 users to switch to 2.5.x !