Feature Proposal: Create Packages For Languages
Motivation
Currently languages are shipped as a bunch of .po files in the release. This means that:
- Only core developers can check in to language files
- Updates to language files have to be done using a manual file patch
- There is no way to express a dependency on a language
- Translations are on the critical path for TWiki releases
Description and Documentation
Repackage language files (.po) as contribs e.g.
SpanishTWikiContrib,
JapaneseTWikiContrib,
GermanTWikiContrib. Remove them from the standard release. This would permit admins to download and install optional language packs from within
configure
.
These packages would (or do already) contain not just the
.po
for
MAKETEXT's, but also translated topics - as
SebastianKlus has been working on in
SpanishTWikiContrib.
Examples
Impact
Implementation
--
Contributors: CrawfordCurrie - 01 Aug 2008
Discussion
Good idea
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KennethLavrsen - 01 Aug 2008
expanded the scope a little - think we should mention
LocalizeContrib,
TopicTranslationsPlugin and
ForUserLanguagesPlugin
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SvenDowideit - 02 Aug 2008
I totally agree. I happens frequently that you are translating a topic and come back to the .po file because you found a little error. Presently you have to update the .po and the topics seperately, but it would make more sense when both are included in the same package.
Besides, why would you run TWiki in a different language without appreciating translated topics or vice versa?
--
SebastianKlus - 02 Aug 2008
As mentioned on irc, a package could prevent people from using a 5.0 translation on a 4.2 by checking the versions.
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OliverKrueger - 03 Aug 2008
Could you elaborate that a little? I did not participate on the irc, but am curious about what you discussed there.
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SebastianKlus - 03 Aug 2008
I am adding some observations that were done by
MartinCleaver,
SvenDowideit,
CrawfordCurrie and
me on the spanish MailerContrib some weeks ago.
I copied them here because the original topic was removed (
SpanishTWikiContrib is now handled in TWiki's Subversion repository).
Shouldn't this be in Plugins web?
--
MartinCleaver - 12 May 2008
Actually, as a translation, I think we should start working out how these should go into Subversion.
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SvenDowideit - 12 May 2008
Agreed. While I applaud the work that Sebastian is doing, is Codev really the right place for it?
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CrawfordCurrie - 12 May 2008
Technically I agree with you guys - those pages are here because the coordination of translation takes place here in Codev. But the actually translated topics should be placed somewhere else. If either in the Plugins web or somewhere else, I do not know. This will depend a lot on how translation will be implemented into TWiki.
I personally like the idea of adding them by a separate web so that the topics of TWiki and TranslatedTWiki do not get mixed up (see also test release of Spanish Contrib in
SpanishTranslation). In this case, TWiki would come in English by default and the administrator would have to add
language packs.
On the other hand, one could envision that one day TWiki will be delivered with different, preconfigured main languages. In this case, the translated topics would kind of replace the "original" (english) topics in the TWiki web.
But as the english documentation is the "main" one and therefore will always be updated first and the translations will always be a step behind, I'd stick more to the first option.
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SebastianKlus - 31 Jul 2008
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SebastianKlus - 11 Aug 2008
UnicodeCollation is another aspect of localisation / translation that could really use separate 'language packages' - although we don't yet support Unicode to this level, once we do there will be a need for language specific rules to ensure that national characters are sorted as expected by TWiki.
It would also be helpful, for users of current TWiki, to provide a page with "recommended locale setup for language XYZ". This would simplify
InstallationWithI18N and help to steer people away from dangerous character sets such as the very common GB2312 (see
JapaneseAndChineseSupport for details).
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RichardDonkin - 13 Aug 2008