Internationalisation of BXE User Interface

Hi

(I'm CC'ing [email protected], as they might be interested in that as wel=
l)

I had a request (or more in the last months) for making BXE=20
multi-langual. There's nothing, which stands against doing it, except my=20
precious time ;)

But here are my thoughts:

We use XML documents for defining the "strings". As we use the cocoon=20
i18n format already in our CMS, it makes a lot of sense to us, to use=20
that XML format. Here's an example (and more info about cocoon's i18n=20
implementation):

http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/userdocs/transformers/i18n-transformer.html#=
Catalogues+%28Dictionaries%29

What we have to do now, is to provide a class to BXE, which does the=20
translation. The best thing would be to do that BXE independent, so one=20
can use that JS class for other things than only in BXE.

Here's a prototype (it's full of coding mistakes, but you should get the=20
idea):

***
function i18n (catalogLocation, locale) {
=09
	this.catalog =3D document.load(catalogLocation + "_" + locale + ".xml");

}

i18n.prototype.getText =3D function (key) {

  	result =3D this.catalog.query('/catalogue/message[@key =3D "'.key.'"]'=
);
         if(result && result->length > 0) {
             return result->item(0)->nodeValue;
         }
         return key;
}

***

And in the actual code, we will simply do then:

var i18nObj =3D new i18n("/xml/catalog","en");
text =3D i18nObj.getText("some text here");

(of course, we need some kind of singleton, so we don't load the xml=20
document again and again, but you get the idea)

One problem with the whole i18n stuff is the order of words, eg. in=20
English it's "Add Element" in German "Element hinzuf=FCgen" and Element i=
s=20
usually variable, therefore we need some variable substitution...

In cocoon, it's solved the following way:
the key would be "Add {0}" and you can provide further arguments. In=20
this case, getText would take a second parameter (an array) for variable=20
substitution..

text =3D i18nObj.getText("Add {0}", array("Elementname"));

and this would return "Add Elementname" in english, but "Elementname=20
hinzuf=FCgen" in German. Does this make sense?

Additionally, we could also add a transformer, which translates whole=20
XML documents with the i18n syntax of cocoon. Not sure, if we really=20
need that in BXE right now, but that should be doable as well.

Any other ideas? Or should I go ahead with that approach?

chregu





--=20
christian stocker | Bitflux GmbH | schoeneggstrasse 5 | ch-8004 zurich
phone +41 1 240 56 70 | mobile +41 76 561 88 60  | fax +41 1 240 56 71
http://www.bitflux.ch  |  [email protected]  |  gnupg-keyid 0x5CE1DECB
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