[drupal-devel] Internationalization, Usability and changes in the coding conventions

[Carl McDade]

  There should be an effort to externalize all english text into default
variables. It makes a great step towards true internatiolization. Does
not cost anything in terms of performance or matainance. What it does do
is make the code that uses hard coded strings open and more resuable. It
adds the flexibility in phrasology that is necessary in
internationalizing Drupal. It creates more usability in that better text
instructions can be delivered to the user based on the situation of the
process. I have made this slight change in my install which allows me to
give a descriptive message based on the url tried. This can be done in
both english and swedish without me having to use gettext and the like

I also feel that this should be added to the coding conventions so that
Drupal code will keep moving forward into internationalization and need
less "fixing" inorder for it to happen properly.


I have created an issue and patch on this but I thought it should be
addresses directly as many will be branching their code for v4.6 and
this should be part of that.

--- common_1.inc    2005-02-19 17:33:21.451910400 +0100
+++ common_2.inc    2005-02-19 17:34:40.876116800 +0100
@@ -427,8 +427,8 @@ function object2array($object) {
  * Always consider whether to use drupal_access_denied() instead to
return a
  * proper (and customizable) 403 error.
  */
-function message_access() {
-  return t('You are not authorized to access this page.');
+function message_access($message = 'You are not authorized to access
this page.') {
+  return t($message);
}