Hi,
To be able to translate variables to multiple languages in Drupal
nicely, we would need a small conceptual change, which would benefit all
of the Drupal developers, so I am posting the call here in hopes we have
someone or a small group to pick this task up.
**We need a central place to define variable defaults**
Simple! Now whenever you need a variable, you do
variable_get('my_fine_var', 'my_default_value');
The problem with this is that you need to repeat this multiple times,
and of course there is a chance you need to modify it later on, so you
need to find all places a variable is used. Not good. Remember the
changes from bluemarine to garland, we have been fixing theme_default
errors for days, finding out places where the variable was used...
So we need a central place to define variable defaults. For Drupal 6
this is enough now:
hook_settings() {
return array(
'my_fine_var' => 'my_default_value',
);
}
Have fun with naming it hook_settings(), as far as I see, it is an
appropriate name, and not taken at the moment :) So Drupal can do a
module_invoke_all() on hook_settings() and collect defaults to all
variables from the modules defining them. It gets easier and shorter to
use variables:
variable_get('my_fine_var');
We can either cache the default vars as returned by the callback in the
variable_get() function, or in the database among other variables, you
get the idea. It is important to have all variables defined in
hook_settings(), even if the default value is an empty string or array.
Don't care yet about how this fits into translatable variables, because
we can only follow up on that if this gets done. So someone please grab
this issue and run with it ;)
Gabor
