[wikka-community] Translations and XML

[Vincent Mayoux]

Thanks Bastien, Masin, and Dario for your explanations.
I will then start the french translation... in the php file.

Ciao,

Vincent

Dario Taraborelli a ?crit :
> Masin sort of answered to your questions :) There was a discussion 
> somewhere (I am not sure it was on the dev mailing list or the 
> website) as to whether we should use PHP constants or arrays or even a 
> core method for string translation. We didn't consider XML for the 
> reasons that Masin pointed out. I think we also discarded .po files as 
> an option considering that this would scare away less *nix-minded 
> translators. There would definitely be a mechanism to override the 
> system defaults with custom translations (similar to what we are doing 
> with plugin path overrides).
>
> Dario
>
> On 16 Jun 2009, at 09:10, Masin Al-Dujaili wrote:
>
>> Hello Vincent,
>>
>> Am Dienstag, den 16.06.2009, 09:21 +0200 schrieb Vincent Mayoux:
>>>> I would like to ask why you chose to store the translations in php 
>>>> files.
>>>> Why not XML ? It could be read, written and processed more easily than
>>>> a php file.
>>
>> I think, it's not. And that's mostly because in a PHP application you
>> can simply include the file with the language constants, while an XML
>> file needs to be parsed with a lot more of program logic.
>>
>>>> An other argument is that you can't redefine a constant in Php, so if
>>>> one need to customize some truncks of text to his site, he will have
>>>> to modify the main translation file, and then lose his changes on the
>>>> next update of Wikka. XML would allow to store the changes in a
>>>> separated file.
>>>> Am I clear ?
>>
>> And how exactly wouldn't you have to consider some extra logic if we'd
>> use XML files? Currently, with PHP constant definitions, you can use
>> either those or constant literals. If you'd have to deviate from those
>> strings in an XML file -- what would you do besides changing the
>> language pack or hard coding the string.
>>
>> I guess, you think that the strings will stay in those PHP files
>> containing the program logic. That's wrong. Currently, all used strings
>> are 'collected' at the top as an intermediate step to out-source them to
>> distinct files, thus enabling language packs (probably the next release
>> (as has been told the last 4 releases ;-))). All you'd have to do is to
>> keep your own customized language pack. I am sure, there'll be a config
>> option to point to your language pack.
>>
>> As for overwriting single strings, there might be some use indeed. But
>> I'd prefer PHP arrays instead of XML nonetheless.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Masin
>>
>>
>>
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