Re: PHP+gettext (was Re: My stab at the templates)

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Jeff Waugh wrote:
> [ On the gettext issue - it's an outrageously bad way to internationalise a
> website, sure it fits in with our other internationalisation efforts, but
> it's not the correct solution.

You can just as easily flip that reasoning -- any system that does not
provide necessary features for translation and translation maintenance
is outrageously bad and not the correct solution.

You design a web site once (well, the next time you will be
reimplementing everything anyway, and hopefully this new site will last
some time =) but translators are the ones who have to use the
translation system and update the site everytime anything changes. In
this respect, I think designing for ease of implementation and not ease
of maintenance is the wrong goal.


> I've seen some successes with XSLT-based web
> sites and internationalisation; perhaps that's a worthwhile way to go. I'm
> sure DV would be very pleased to see a libxslt PHP module for us to use! ]

I like most solutions, as long as they have a gettext interface =) I
believe I speak for most GNOME translators when I say that.
So you don't have to use gettext calls if you think that is a bad
solution, as long as you provide a means for translating with all
existing translation tools that use gettext. E.g. some string parsing
and copying mechanism from po format into your preferred format and
vice-versa. This has been done before (see xml-i18n-tools).


Christian