Re: [phpesp-dev] Translations

[Bishop B. <ph...@id...>]

Quoting Matthew Gregg <mat...@gm...>:

> On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 13:44 -0500, Bishop Bettini wrote:
>> I personally prefer to use the gettext tools and manipulate .po files
>> by hand, but Launchpad's interface is straightforward and easy to use.
>>   I am sure our translators will appreciate it.
>>
> The is the beauty of Launchpads service, you can work with .po and
> upload or use a nice web UI.  I hope we might see more up to date
> translations if it's dead easy to do it.  Also, Lauchpad helps you keep
> your translations current even when you don't have a translator
> available, using translations of the same string from other projects.

Yes, I especially like the "share" aspect!  Another good reason to =20
keep the _() msgid strings short.


>> What problems do you see with the translations in phpESP?
>>  The number  of translations, the quality of the translations, the
>> code's use of
>> translations?
> Quality.

Ok. I've only briefly looked through the languages that I know, and I =20
only saw a few things that I would change, but my client is totally =20
English-speaking, so internationalization is way way way down my list.


>>   I personally see some strange use of _() in the code,
>> specifically large blocks of text in _() calls.  In other heavily
>> multi-lingual projects I've worked in, we've used _() for small bits
>> of text in the code, but put most of the UI text into template files
>> outside the code.
> It would be nice if we did use templates.  But since we don't(yet) and I
> hope since we only have a few large blocks like this, it can be managed
> as is?

Yeah, everything as it is now is managable.  The only glaring =20
internationalization issue, to me, is the help file: it's not =20
translated at all, that I saw.  (It's also raw HTML, instead of being =20
a DocBook or similar.)  If that were more modular, translation would =20
be more tenable.

As far as templating goes, I prefer smarty.  I've used it extensively, =20
know it, and I like its features over many of the other products =20
available.  That would be my recommendation moving forward.

When I'm working on apps without a templating system, I tend to write =20
functions that render reusable forms/widgets/snippets, then assemble =20
the reusable things in painter functions.  That seems to work well: =20
fast, modular, easily migrated one at a time to templates.  My landing =20
page enhancement (soon to come) does this.  I've attached it for your =20
review to see what I mean.

bishop

--=20
Bishop Bettini
ideacode, Inc.
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