[Zope-Coders] First step for i18n support

[Andreas Jung]

Internationalization and localization of Zope has lots of aspects.
I agree that the hard-coded strings inside the Zope sources are a good
point to start. However there are some more hotspots. Maybe the most
important
problem is adding unicode support for the ZCatalog. The current splitter
only allows to index StringType objects but no unicode strings. I have a
Splitter
in the making that should solve the problem.

Characterset and language negotiaton is also an open point. I have written
a fishbowl proposal some months ago covering this problem.

The most challenging problem IMO is to find an uniform mechanism to localize
Zope itself and third-party products. Maybe a gettext based solution will do
the job.


Andreas



----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephan Richter" <srichter@cbu.edu>
To: "Zope Coders" <zope-coders@zope.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 09:14
Subject: [Zope-Coders] First step for i18n support


> 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
>
>
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