Re: [Webwork-devel] Adding i18n and text support to Velocity

[Bill B. <bi...@pr...>]

Hello Victor,

Victor Salaman wrote:
> 
> They say that waiting is a good thing :)
> 
> I have all that done  for velocity, including:
> 
> new wwvelocityservlet featuring a context Toolbox
> ui templates
> common tools such as i18n,url,etc...
> integration to sitemesh for decoration
> 
> But I can't commit until we release 1.0 :(

Yes, your changes seem fairly extensive.

I was trying to implement something minimal that could make it into 1.0
since not having the i18n and text support at all for Velocity for the 1.0
release is rather bad IMHO.  The UI stuff is nice-to-have but not a core
feature like i18n and text are which is why I think at least a minimal
solution needs to be in 1.0.

Have figured out a way of implementing a subset of i18n and text support
entirely within Velocity macros.  However I think minimal text support (no
parameters) and i18n would be better as a simple methods within
WebWorkUtil with a simple macro wrapper for i18n.   The changes are quite
simple and would not be destabilizing.

If there are no objections, I'd still like to do this but in a manner
that's forward compatible with your implementation.  Or maybe a subset of
your changes for i18n and text support would be acceptable for inclusion
into 1.0?

> So I'm stuck here... If you'd like a preview come to Efnet #java (irc) and
> look for me :)

Will need to get an IRC client first ...

Is there anything you could send me that describes how your version if the
i18n and text stuff is called?

> /V

This webwork-devel list is really slow.  I still haven't seen your message
from the list yet.

-Bill

> >From: "Bill Burton" <bi...@pr...>
> >To: WebWork Developers <web...@li...>
> >Subject: [Webwork-devel] Adding i18n and text support to Velocity
> >Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:18:21 -0500
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> >I've been looking into the best way to add support for the equivalent of
> >the ww:i18n and ww:text JSP tags to Velocity.
> >
> >One thing that seems apparent is that the ValueStack needs to be exposed
> >to Velocity templates in some manner.  This is at least true to get the
> >i18n functionality to work and may be necessary in other cases as well.
> >
> >I'm planning on adding the ValueStack to the VelocityContext so it can be
> >accessed via the key $valuestack.  However, most usage will be wrapped in
> >macros like #pushvalue() and #popvalue() so users won't access $valuestack
> >directly.  For user visible methods such as findValue() and test(), I've
> >modified WebWorkUtil adding these methods to the delegate to the same
> >ValueStack methods.  This will allow these methods can be called using the
> >syntax $webwork.methodName().  In the case of findValue() that will
> >probably be available as $webwork.value(...).
> >
> >In the case of i18n support there would be an i18n macro that would be
> >called like this:
> >     #i18n("webwork.action.test.i18n.Shop")
> >
> >By definition it would push the specified ResourceBundle on the ValueStack
> >thereby allowing the text support to use that ResourceBundle instead of
> >the default.  However, because this macro isn't a block tag, there needs
> >to be some way of popping the ResourceBundle off the ValueStack.  To do
> >this, I was going to expose the ValueStack popValue() method within a
> >macro:
> >     #popvalue()
> >Which would be implemented as $valuestack.popValue().
> >
> >In like manner there are times when an Action or Bean needs to be pushed
> >onto the stack.  For instance:
> >     #action("i18n.Shop", $shop)
> >     #pushvalue($shop)
> >     ...
> >     #execute($shop)
> >     ...
> >     #popvalue()
> >
> >I'm also looking into making an i18n block directive which would scope the
> >ResourceBundle instance as in:
> >     #i18n("webwork.action.test.i18n.Shop")
> >     ...
> >     #end
> >
> >If I can get that to work, the popValue will be implied at the #end.
> >
> >As far as support for text goes, I'm planning on adding a several text()
> >methods to WebWorkUtil.  As a result, they'll be available via the
> >$webwork context name.
> >     $webwork.text(key)
> >     $webwork.text(key, param0)
> >     etc.
> >
> >In order to implement the parameter support, I'll copy the TextTag class
> >into the .velocity package and rework it with more appropriate API's for
> >Velocity.  After the 1.0 release, these two classes could be refactored so
> >they call a common class in .util.
> >
> >Thanks for any feedback,
> >-Bill
> >