[LON-CAPA-dev] Fwd: Internationalization

[Gerd Kortemeyer]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Gerd Kortemeyer <korte@lite.msu.edu>
> Date: Thu Sep 18, 2003  8:28:34  AM US/Eastern
> To: lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org, Leonardo Mendes 
> <lmendes@decom.fee.unicamp.br>, Ricardo Luis Kulzer 
> <ricardol@decom.fee.unicamp.br>, Horst Bögel 
> <boegel@chemie.uni-halle.de>, Shoji Kajita 
> <kajita@itc.nagoya-u.ac.jp>, "Timothy Takemoto" 
> <tim@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp>, Michael Thoennessen > <thoennessen@nscl.msu.edu>
> Cc: Gerd Kortemeyer <korte@lite.msu.edu>, Ed Kashy 
> <kashy@nscl.msu.edu>, cspeier@msu.edu, Deborah Kashy 
> <kashyd@pilot.msu.edu>, Wolfgang Bauer <bauer@pa.msu.edu>, Helen Keefe 
> <helen@lon-capa.org>
> Subject: Internationalization
>
> Hi,
>
> As you might have seen from a number of CVS commits in the last two 
> days, we have started to internationalize LON-CAPA, so that it can run 
> in different languages. We have also started localizing for German and 
> Portuguese. Internalizing is the bulk of the work right now, 
> localizing can be done anytime, and involves no programming.
>
> The internationalization process involves putting a wrapper around 
> on-screen user messages and menus and turning them into keys, which 
> the Maketext library translates into the desired language output using 
> a look-up table ("lexicon").
>
> As keys we are currently using the plain English messages, and 
> Maketext is configured to replace the message by its own key if no 
> translation is found. This makes it easy to phase in the 
> internationalization without disturbing the screen output.
>
> Internationalization is tedious, and the more we can distribute the 
> work, the better.
>
> *** New software should be written in internationalized format from 
> now on.
>
> *** If you feel like doing something brainless but productive, grab a 
> module and internationalize it.
>
> *** As you come across some code during normal programming, just 
> insert the wrappers.
>
> *** HERE'S WHAT TO DO:
>
> Into the "use" section of a module, we need to insert
>
>  use Apache::lonlocal;
>
> - note that there are NO BRACKETS, we *want* to pollute our namespace.
>
> Inside might be something like this
>
> sub message {
>    my $status=shift;
>    my $message='Status unknown';
>    if ($status eq 'WON') {
>       $message='You have won.';
>    } elsif ($status eq 'LOST') {
>       $message='You are a total looser.';
>    }
>    return $message;
> }
> ...
> $r->print('<h3>Gamble your Homework Points</h3>');
> ...
> $r->print(<<ENDMSG);
> <font size="1">Rules:</font>
> <font size="0">No purchase necessary. Illegal where not allowed.</font>
> ENDMSG
>
> We have to now wrap the subroutine &mt() ("maketext") around our 
> messages, but not around markup, etc. We also want minimal 
> disturbance. The first two examples are easy:
>
> sub message {
>    my $status=shift;
>    my $message='Status unknown';
>    if ($status eq 'WON') {
>       $message='You have won.';
>    } elsif ($status eq 'LOST') {
>       $message='You are a total looser.';
>    }
>    return &mt($message);
> }
> ...
> $r->print('<h3>'.&mt('Gamble your Homework Points').'</h3>');
>
> The last one is a bummer, since you cannot call subroutines inside of 
> (<<MARKER). I have written a little subroutine to generate a 
> translated hash for that purpose:
>
> my %lt=&Apache::lonlocal::texthash('header' => 'Rules', 'disclaimer' 
> => 'No purchase necessary. Illegal where not allowed.');
> $r->print(<<ENDMSG);
> <font size="1">$lt{'header'}:</font>
> <font size="0">$lt{'disclaimer'}</font>
> ENDMSG
>
> As a programmer, your job is done here. If everything worked, you 
> should see no changes on the screen.
>
> As a translator, you need to provide the lexicon for the keys, which 
> in this case is the plain text message. The lexicons sit in 
> loncom/localize/localize, with the language code as filename, for 
> example de.pm for the German translation. The file then simply looks 
> like this:
>
>    'You have won.'
> => 'Sie haben gewonnen.',
>
>    'You are a total looser.'
> => 'Sie sind der totale Verlierer.',
>
>    'Rules'
> => 'Regeln',
>
>    'No purchase necessary. Illegal where not allowed.'
> => 'Es ist erlaubt, einfach zu verlieren, und das ist Ihre Schuld.'
>
> The German translation lexicon is in pretty okay shape, but not 
> complete yet. Portuguese currently only covers the login screen. 
> Russian is purely experimental. Looks like UTF-8 is the way to encode 
> this, at least for latin/greek-based languages, but we still have to 
> learn a lot.
>
> This is a relatively easy programming task, and any help is 
> appreciated.
>
> Maketext can do a whole lot more, see
>
>  http://search.cpan.org/dist/Locale-Maketext/lib/Locale/Maketext.pod
>
> but for most purposes, we do not have to mess with that.
>
> - Gerd.
>
>