[interchange-i18n] Internationalizing Foundation

[Ton Verhagen]

Hi All,

At 04:14 PM 10/1/01 +0200, Racke wrote:
>I repost this here to start the discussion about this topics
>again. We should end up with a decision soon.
>
>Mike Heins <mheins at redhat.com> writes:

[snip]

> >     1. Internationalized pages -- should we start fresh and have a
> >        pages_i18n directory in addition to the default US-centric
> >        pages? How about templates/regions and templates/components?

Not as things are right now. One would have to change things in too many 
places.
We would need to build a 'Localization Manager/Wizard'
See below.

> >
> >     2. Product database structure. There are several options:
> >
> >        a. One big table with new columns description_de,
> >         description_nl, etc. This is my least favorite.

I agree. A bit hard to maintain imho.

> >
> >        b. Separate tables for each language, with empty fields falling
> >         through to the default products. Basically, this means

Yes ! This is the way to go.
One only needs to update data that differs from the default language.
[snip]

> >        c. Separate tables *not in ProductFiles* with product
> >         description information.

We also need the think about the 'product specs' file. An extra file 
containing additional product information. Maybe we could use this file for 
localizing the description as well.

> >
> >        There may be more that others can think of.
> >
> >     3. Pricing -- should we provide easily selectable ability to
> >        maintain separate prices for each currency or should we
> >        concentrate on PriceDivide.

I guess both would be doable.
When choosing option 2b for products table (separate tables with fallback 
fields) this could easily be done.
Use PriceDivide only if the price field is empty in both tables (default 
and localized table).
One could override this behavior by a config setting in Catalog.cfg 
(PriceDivide_Always = yes) or by setting a scratch variable.

> >
> >     4. Checkout forms -- should we build a different form for each
> >        locality, or try and do one big form?
> >
> >     5. Text messages -- should we use
> >
> >               [L CODE]The text.[/L]
> >       or
> >               [L]The text.[/L]
> >       or
> >               [LC]
> >                       The text.
> >                       [de_DE] Der text [/de_DE]
> >                       [es_ES] El texto [/es_ES]
> >               [/LC]
> >
> >       or a combination?

I prefer to use [L CODE]The text[/L]
This way it's easy to change the default text without messing up the 'key' 
in the locale table.
Possibly we could make a kind of 'Localization Manager' to easily 
manipulate the text for different locales.
This manager could also have functionality integrated into it to generate 
completely localized pages. Similar to static page building, but only for 
localization (and put them in a pages_i18n directory). This would reduce 
parsing time.

The [LC] could be used for 'very'  large text blocks.
Better don't use it for small text messages as maintenance will become 
labor intensive.

[snip]

> > We need to think about things which will make the internationalization 
> effort outstanding.
> >

I totally agree.

[snip]

Best,

Ton