[Phpgroupware-developers] to all devel's and translators: Format of the lang-phrases in phpgw

[Ralf Becker]

Hi devels and translators,

some talks with gugux and skwashd have been starting the discussion
which forms the lang-phrases (textual string send to the lang function
in the phpgw sources) should have:

The actual sources show two forms:
a) 'user x wants x from you!!!' and in phpgw_en.lang: user x wants x from 
you!!!        app     en
User %1 wants %2 from you!!!
b) 'user %1 wants %2 from you!!!' and in phpgw_en.lang: user %1 wants %2
from you!!!     app     en      User %1 wants %2 from you!!!

(Please note all phrases (in the source and the 1st field in the 
lang-file) should be lowercase. Only the translation (4th field) in the 
lang-files should mixed case. This is for performance reasons.)

Both forms work in most cases, but there are a few problems with a)
(using the x's):
1) if there is no translation in a selected language for a phrase like
the example in a) you will get the message: 'User x wants x from
you!!!*' and not just the correct english version with a '*'. That can
make a uncomplete translation (which unfortunally most are) unusable.
2) the developer_tools app, which gather the phrases automaticaly from
the code, generate a lang-file with %'s (same is true for the eTemplates)

Specialy because of 1) I would strongly suggest to use only the form b)
(the %'s) in the source.

If we going to change the existing code to only one form it should be
form b). I think that is a good think, but it is an enormous task, as it
requires to change all lang-files to not run in to probs like 1).
Because of that, I think, it should not be done in the stable branch,
but in HEAD. This has to do with the fact, that changed or added phrases
are not automaticaly put into effect after a cvs update (you have to
manually run setup/language management and for changed phrases even with
the setting 'delete all and insert new ones').

Please comment on this (even if you just want to agree).

Ralf

PS.: For the translators not familiar with the developer_tools, the
easiesed way to make the translations, a few points how to uses them:
- yes they work again in HEAD since yesterday
- after selecting 'Language file management' and the app, you might want
to first complete the phrases of the english lang-file (if the devel
forgots to put the new ones in): this is done with the 'Search for
missing phrases' (dont bother with the error messages, they are normal),
if there are new ones (after going 'Back') use 'Write to lang table' to
get them to youre db without going through setup
- select your target languages now (and click submit)
- you will see all the missing phrases of your language and can enter
them now
- to save your changes you have to click 'Update' (!), (evtl. 'Write to
lang table' see above) and at the end download the new target language file

Hope that makes the appreciated job of you translators a bit easier :-)

--
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Ralf Becker
digital ROCK, Becker & Macht GbR            Telefon +49 (631) 31657-51
Leibnizstraße 17                            Telefax +49 (631) 31657-52
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