[development] multi-lingual migration problems

[Karen Stevenson]

I was trying to see if this was already being discussed somewhere.
Sounds like it is not so I created a new issue at
http://drupal.org/node/1164852. We should get this cleared up before a
lot more sites start migrating.

Karen

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Gábor Hojtsy <gabor at hojtsy.hu> wrote:
> Hi Karen,
>
> These sound like bugs in the API, right. Looks like the issue linked
> is not for core. Do you plan to submit core issues since you have not
> found any yet for these?
>
> Gábor
>
> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Karen Stevenson <karen at elderweb.com> wrote:
>> I am working on the Content Migrate module to migrate field data from
>> D6 to D7. Many things are now working nicely but I have a nasty
>> problem that has erupted in various ways around what value to use for
>> the 'language' in the fields that are migrated.
>>
>> Here is what happens on a fresh D7 install, without migration:
>>
>> - If you create new fields in the UI, all every field is created with
>> the flag 'translatable' set to TRUE. There is no apparent way to
>> create a field in the UI that has 'translatable' set to FALSE.
>> - If you create new fields using field_create_field() 'translatable'
>> is set to FALSE, unless you explicitly set a value for 'translatable'
>> and set it to TRUE,
>>
>> This looks like a bad idea, having opposite defaults for the two
>> methods of creating fields. So any process that uses the API to create
>> fields will create fields that are inconsistent with fields created in
>> the UI, unless it follows the UI pattern of forcing every field to be
>> translatable. Plus every process that creates fields programmatically
>> has to explicitly set that value to avoid unexpected results.
>>
>> Core has already been bit by this confusion -- the migrated node body
>> field is marked as translatable but the migrated comment body is *not*
>> translatable.
>>
>> Plus there really should be some way for a field weigh in on this.
>> Things like number and date fields should probably not be
>> translatable, but there seems to be no way a field module can control
>> that.
>>
>> I have been trying to sort through the migration issues in
>> http://drupal.org/node/1063852, if anyone wants to help. I tried to
>> see if any core issues were filed around this but couldn't see any.
>> I'm trying to get my head around which of these are 'bugs' and which
>> are just things I have to work around. I do not even use translations
>> myself, so it's very hard for me to be sure I am drawing the right
>> conclusions. I hope someone who does understand the translation system
>> can jump in here.
>>
>