[translations] automatic po import - how should we do it?

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Hi,

There is a small change in Drupal for 5.0.0, which enables you to provide 
translations for the installer. By providing a ja.po, it.po, de.po, hu.po 
etc for the default install profile (and copy the file into the default 
install profile folder), you can choose a foreign language in install 
time. (An installer.pot file will be available).

Now if you have any foreign language PO files for the installer, it 
assumes you are interested in the locale functionality and enables that 
module for you.

The question is how to process. The locale module should add some default 
languages into the database to start with.

#1: Should the available installer .po files define what languages are 
added by default? Ie. if I have de.po, it.po and hu.po files in the 
default profile folder, I would have German, Italian and Hungarian 
languages setup automatically during install time?

Once the language is set up, we should automatically import translations 
for enabled modules.

#2: How and when should we import translations? We might get away with 
enabling the locale module first strictly before any other module. Then if 
any other module is later enabled (system.module would be the second), we 
would look for .po files in the "po" subfolder of that module (just like 
these are placed in contrib modules) and import the .po files for enabled 
languages, if available.

#3: How should contrib modules handled? Should Drupal look for .po files 
in the po subfolder and import into the already set up languages? What to 
do with multimodule bundles, where you don't need to enable all modules 
(like links or ecommerce)? If you provide one .po file for the bundle, 
then you have many stuff to import, without a clear reason... Should we 
support payment-module.de.po type of filenames? Should we migrate to using 
these type of filenames only, so that simple de.po files will not work 
for standalone modules?

#4: How should updates get covered? Should the module import the new 
translations over the old ones? We have no information to clear 
translations from the database (no data to look for what translation 
corresponds to what module, and many translations are used in multiple 
modules). If we import new translations over the old ones, possible user 
customizations will get lost. If we only import new strings, updated 
(fixed) translations will not get into the DB. Should we tell the user to 
do database backups, and sidestepp this issue with overwriting all 
imported strings?

#5: There is an effort to support uninstallation. It is still a good 
question, how would that fit with locales. See questions #4 above.

I would very much value your opinions. I intend to submit a patch for 
Drupal as soon as possible, so we can get automatic PO import in 5.0.0. 
Unfortunately it is not possible to create a patch, if most of the above 
questions are still open.

Gabor