Re: [Phpwiki-talk] internationalisation for phpwiki (fwd)

[Jan N. <ja...@gn...>]

On Sunday, 1 October 2000, Arno Hollosi writes:

> Translating the code (more precisely: user messages emitted by code) poses 
> more of a problem. Jan uses Gnu's gettext. While this seems to be the right 
> choice within PHP, I question if it's apropriate for phpwiki.

I just used the simplest method.  I agree that in a Wiki, ideally you'd
want to be able to change *everything* on every page.  So, maybe the
Right Thing is to read all wiki-page-emitted text from a wiki-page.

> For example, on my vanilla install of SuSE linux, gettext is not compiled 
> into PHP, thus I'd only be able to use the english default.

Well, I don't care about this.  If your distribution sucks, fix it,
complain/send a patch to SuSE, or use another distribution.  I must
add, that the guys at SuSE have been most helpful when they decided
to include LilyPond but found that SuSE had troubles with their C++
development setup.

Stupid question: you *are* using php4, right?

> Furthermore,
> if I understand the patch correctly, one has to run translate.sh before
> starting the wiki.

Sorry, I'll document this better.  Translate.sh is a hack, and only 
included as ``documentation'' for translators.  They only have to run
translate.sh when:
  
   * native strings in php code were changed/added
   * translations were changed added

> While xgettext and msgfmt are installed on my system, 
> msgmerge is not. (We can get around that by adding the output
> of translate.sh into the distribution tarball.)

The output of msgfmt is always included in a distribution, the
``problem'' with phpwiki is that source and package are the
same.  You only need msgmerge if you want to automagically
update a language file.

> So what I'm complaining about is that this goes somewhat against the 
> simplistic approach otherwise taken within phpwiki. I had already one user 
> email me that he couldn't set up phpwiki+mysql, because he commented out the 
> dbmlib part, but didn't uncomment the mysql section (he didn't recognize that
    +  
> "/*" & "*/" are comment delimiters). That's our audience.

Hmm, I disagree here, too.  Ignorant users cannot expect to install
software that's not in their distribution.  Otoh, it should be trivial
and would be nice, to have a even simpler install [script].  ``index.php3''
would be a fine place for bootstrapping the install.  Things like: 

   * automagically use db name of install directory
   * default to mysql if mysql is installed
   * show warning message if we don't have permission to create a db

etc.  But maybe it's best to leave these trivialities to the [Debian]
packagers.

> Why not use php-files that just include a hash of translated strings?

Yes, this would be Better.  Do send a patch.

Greetings,
Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <ja...@gn...> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org