I rather like Jose's approach to i18n support, and that is having it in core. I'm a little skeptical that having i18n as modular functionality. It should really be a part of core, and not something that can be turned on and off.
You are, unfortunately, making the same 'mistake' that Joses approach has had since the beginning: There is *no* holy grail. All our i18n sites differ so much in what they need that they can never use the same codebase. *this* cannot live as turnkey in core. It can only ever live in core as APIS that offer miodule developers to build translation and so interfaces. Beleive me: I have been hacking Drupal since I released my first english and dutch Drupal site back in 2002 . My post is not "just a wild idea" to hack current systems up into smaller chunks and that be it. Its four years of Drupal-i18n experience that I compiled into a final proposal :). And I am not sayig this to lever myself as /te/ i18n guru, or to get aah and oohs. I am saying his, to illustrate my reasons for disliking the monolyth apprroach. Bèr -- | Bèr Kessels | webschuur.com | website development | | Jabber & Google Talk: ber@jabber.webschuur.com | http://bler.webschuur.com | http://www.webschuur.com |