[development] refactoring profile module categories (the other low hanging fruit :)

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Hi,

So we faced two "generic problems" when preparing localization for 
Drupal 6 objects (like user profiles, variables, aggregator stuff). The 
first bomb I already dropped down, and it erupted into a huge thread 
(variable defaults). The second is refactoring of profile module categories.

Yes, I have heard the "deprecated podcast" (see 
http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/drupal_podcast_no_38_deprecated), and 
I know there are possibly better tools then profile module to do the job 
(lots of comments on the podcast on profile module!).

BUT we have profile module there, so we are about to support translation 
of profile module fields and categories, unless suddenly some 
replacement for Drupal core shows up, or Dries decides to remove profile 
module from Drupal 6.x-dev altogether (none of which seems likely so far).

We faced some major pains because profile module's category notion is 
rather broken. Some folks were very happy on the Drupal 5 release 
including autocomplete support for category names, but that was really 
driving forces away from the real problem. Jose A Reyero prepared a 
patch for us to refactor profile module categories into being separate 
objects. Read on here for the patch and more information:

   http://drupal.org/node/141419

Gabor