[development] Drupal and i18n, the holy grail?

[Bèr Kessels]

Op maandag 27 februari 2006 01:07, schreef Benson Wong:
> > *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.
>
> Why not?
> Aren't those the same?
> How do you accomplish one without the other?

Because the interface and workflow and all tat depends on your *case* or 
implementation. 

> How would your proposal address these challenges:
>
> 1. Storing the multi-lingual content in the DB (true support, not just
> making new nodes)

This would be a *contrib* module named something like 
i18n_node_mirroring.module (store teh contents of a node in separate 
locations)
It can live (but prolly not used simultanuously) next to a 
i18n_node_duplication.module (a new node for each lang)

> 2. Making it easy for contribs to support multi-lingual nodes (again
> not just new nids). What if these contribs create new node types? I
> don't think we can expect all contributors to create their own
> multi-lingual implementations. (shudder).

Nodes (in contrary to terms and comments) have very, very good APIs. Wuith the 
proper hooks you can catch EVERY node. 

For those that sill think that Drupal should offer the whole shazam (aka 
turnkey internatiolisation) in core. Some out-of-the-field examples why this 
can never work:
* How to address comments to multilingual nodes? having a thread that contains 
both FR and EN can be required, but might be unwished.
* How to address non-translated nodes? Depends higly on the nature of the 
content and the 'community'/editors.
* How to adress 'I have 5.000 nodes, now I add a third language'. 
* How to tag or classify content? Translated terms? Translation-specific 
terms? Shared Terms? Depending highly on the nature of your site and usage of 
classification (galleries/forums)
* How to build books? Can a french node be child of an English node. Some 
might need that (I did).
* How to build menus? Does every menu item have a mirror in the other 
languages? Or do you have per-language menus? Do you have nodes under menu 
items? Under all menu-items?
* Should a teaser list contain all languages? On a blog where i sometimes 
write EN and sometimes NL I will want that. 
* How to enable translation of only the body, teaser and title of an image (or 
any file).

If you are still think that a single turnkey is possible in core, please llet 
me know, I can write five more of such lists ;)

However, all thise have two common denominators:
* They use the same switching APIs, HTML wrappers and some storage aPIs
* They use the same interface trnalators t(), and ll need configurations to be 
translated and switched.

-- 
| Bèr Kessels | webschuur.com | website development |
| Jabber & Google Talk: ber at jabber.webschuur.com
| http://bler.webschuur.com | http://www.webschuur.com |


Gebruik geen CVS, tenzij je zeker van je zaak bent:
 http://help.sympal.nl/gebruik_geen_cvs_tenzij_je_zeker_van_je_zaak_bent