[Zope-Coders] First step for i18n support

[Stephan Richter]

Hello everyone,

Joachim Werner from iuveno AG is busy translating his new CMS and therefore 
also Zope using ZBabel. While this E-mail is not about ZBabel becoming the 
core-translation component (that will be later ;-) ), there are certain 
quirks in Zope that do not allow some of the content (labels) to be translated.

For example: When manipulating users in a user folder, there is only one 
method called manage_users() and it executes actions based on the submit 
button value. This is of course bad, if you are translating the buttons and 
the values do not agree anymore.

I would like to start a small project fixing these issues, since they will 
be there, no matter what translation system is being used. Maybe this is 
also a good chance to found the "Zope Code Cleanup" workgroup (and for me 
to try my CVS access :-)).

Also, I scanned over the Zope code a little more, and I think the ZMI is 
not as integrated into the Zope core as everyone thinks. All the 
MessageBox-returns can be changed to return directly to the previous page, 
just sending a status message (that will be displayed in this grey box that 
says "Saved Changes. ..." There are only a couple of messages and HTML 
snippets that are NOT of this nature, and we could simply move them into 
DTMLFile objects. This way translating really becomes a matter of providing 
translated DTML files. I think that would be cool. I will keep thinking 
about a generic way to translate simple hard-coded sentences... (Again, 
this is all i18n tool independent!)

Mmhh, maybe we should also create a "Zope i18n Coders" workgroup. I would 
(if nobody else steps up) be willing to be the "project manager" (was that 
the term that was used?) for both of these workgroups.

Please comment on the ideas. I think now is the time we tackle i18n issues. 
While we might not find the perfect solution now, it would be great (and 
necessary) to have a good one soon. I would not like to have a huge 
philosophical discussion about it now (I already had these plenty of 
times), but constructive comments on how we could get it done in the next 
1.5 months for example. Here is a time table I see as being manageable:

1. October 4th - October 7th: Discuss some of the issues and other things
2. October 7th - October 14th: Identify hard-coded Zope locations, that do 
not permit us to translate Zope fully.
3. October 14th - October 21st: Implement these changes.
4. October 21st - October 27st: Testing and start talking about direct i18n 
support.
5. I don't know. I think at this point we will have heated discussions! ;-)

Please comment constructively on these ideas (a lack of this usually 
prevents me form posting on Zope-Dev). While critcism is good, 
hate/flame-mails will just stall the progress. But I don't have to tell 
you....I guess you guys already got plenty of these too... ;-)

Regards,
Stephan

--
Stephan Richter
CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student
Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management