Re: Handling Translations

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Joakim Ziegler wrote:
> It seems to me that both these methods are somewhat complex, and, more
> importantly, slow.

Do you have any data on that? I doubt the gettext solution introduces
any user-noticable difference in speed. If in doubt, test it, compare
it, produce some data on performerance, and then we can have a
discussion. Speculating isn't helping.


> Now, if we think about the fact that if the template
> system works as it should, and actual PHP functions are externalized,
> then there won't be any common elements between the different language
> pages (apart from headers and footers to call templates.)
> 
> So why not just use different pages (PHP files) for different languages?

Because it sucks. It's very much non-maintainable. How do you get
notification of changes? If random hacker X spots an error on the site
and commits a fix to cvs, how is translator Y[1-40] to know that spot Z
on page W changed, without diffing the entire site periodically, and
manually inspect all diffs, and on top of that try to insert
corresponding changes in their translated pages? Translators want to
translate, not spend most of their time trying to track changes.

gettext/xml-i18n-tools/PO format solves these fundamental problems. We
have discussed it repeatedly on this list, but you just continue to
ignore the problem.


> I believe it's pretty common to use foobar.en.html and so on.

And that doesn't mean that we have to do an inferior and very much
broken solution like that when doing a brand new site. Listen to
translators for once, and help them help you, instead of ignoring them
and their plea for the proper translation interface on purpose.


Christian