[development] Multilingual support

[Gabor Hojtsy]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2007, Roberto Gerola wrote:
> I have joined months ago the groups to add multilingual support
> to Drupal core : http://groups.drupal.org/i18n,
> where I have posted also my ideas and my proposals.
>
> I had joined also the mailing list activated by DevelopmentSeed :
> http://devseeddev.com/pipermail/internationalization_devseeddev.com/
>
> But, unfortunately, it seems to me that there is not much activity on these
> communications channels.

You intended to write that there *used to* be not much activity. To speak 
about me, I was working on polishing up some of my modules for the 5.0 
release, then doing the same with the Hugarian translation, coming up with 
automatic localization import, creating an install profile out of this, 
and support the users having problems, fixing bugs. This is also an i18n 
related feature intended to come to Drupal 6 core, but it was certainly 
not an i18n focus group task.

> Reading this post http://groups.drupal.org/node/2781
> and taking a look at the Subversion repository here :
> http://svn3.cvsdude.com/devseed/sandbox
> it seems to me that some crucial decisions about multingual
> support in Drupal are already taken, or am I wrong ?

I can only repeat Gerhard here. Until code gets into Drupal core, there 
are no final decisions made. And even then you can submit more patches to 
enhance, fix and otherwise modify the behaviour until code freeze.

> For example, if I understand correctly, taxonomy translations
> will be implemented duplicating the trees, variables will
> be duplicated in their own table adding a language attribute.
>
> Well, I would like to know what is, if exists, the list of features
> that will be implemented in Drupal 6 to achieve multilingual support,
> and also the technical solutions that could be adopted.

Roberto, you were invited, and you gladly come into the devseed supported 
focus group. We set up the infrastructure, so we can collaborate on core 
modifications. There is no other way. Handing around patches for whatever 
state core is in on your development box does not work. Just as we started 
off the discussions recently, you asked yourself to get removed from 
the SVN server for unspecified reasons. It would be nice to discuss these 
issues in the community I think, and this is why we did an open discussion 
before. I was busy with the above specified stuff, and have not been able 
to take the helm to strongly lead. Noone else did it either. You asked to 
get removed and now you think the discussion is made in a closed group.

> I'm asking this because I would like, if possible, to avoid duplicating
> work and to be able to prepare a migration path for the users
> of Localizer when multilingual support will be in the core, probably,
> in the next release.

Maybe you should not ask for given decisions, but be part of the 
discussion, so we can make a better product together after all.

> I wonder if something of all this already done work can be used, at
> least as logic or idea if not as code.

I will write up a detailed document later next week. We did 12-14 hour 
work days this week all day i18n discussion and coding at chx's flat 
(ordered lunch, so we don't need to waste time with going out for lunch), 
so it is probably better to take a small break now, let the ideas sink down 
and polish. We did go through on the way discussed earlier in the 
groups.drupal.org posts, so our outcome will not be surprising for those 
reading the posts there.

Ps. thanks to Development Seed to sponsor Jose flying in for the meeting.

Gabor