Hello, On Tuesday, May 3, 2011 5:08:28 PM UTC+3, Tom Evans wrote: > > On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Uri Goldstein <uri.go...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Tom, > > > > I definitely agree that having docs is good, reading and comprehending > the > > docs is better. Reading and comprehending the docs yourself you might > have > > noticed the following quote: "If you were to try this and Django > supported > > it, you would inevitably see a mixture of translated strings (from your > > application) and English strings (from Django itself)." No mention of a > > technical limitation, only of a goal to not see the mixture of translated > > strings. > > Were you expecting that a new translation would automatically have the > correct > translations for that language? What a strange expectation. > No, actually I wasn't expecting that. The strangeness here seems to be your understanding of what I've written.
> The technical limitation belongs to gettext, not Django. It cannot load a > supplementary language file when the main language file doesn't exist. > IE, for our putative Mongolian translation, it cannot load > your_app/locale/mn/LC_MESSAGES/django.mo if > django/locale/mn/LC_MESSAGES/django.mo does not exist. > > > That's good to know. It might even have been better had any of this even been hinted at in the documentation. > > > > The amount of effort to "to make at least a minimal translation of the > > Django core" might be minuscule or it might not, I find that it shouldn't > be > > made necessary. > > You think Django should support all languages, out of the box? Do you > have a patch? > I do think that and no, I don't have a patch. So? > FYI, 'a minimal translation of the Django core' means copying the 'en' > translation to your new language. Whether you need to translate parts > of that depends upon whether your site needs it. > That's also good to know and indeed makes everything a lot simpler. I only wish someone could have explained that earlier in the discussion or even better, in the documentation. > > > > And finally, I am assured that this is but a small issue to deal with and > > yet, had it not been an issue in the first place it would not have been > > mentioned in the official docs, would it? > > > > Many things are mentioned in the manual that are small issues, since they > evidently confuse new users. This is one of them. Anyone who has used > gettext > before would be aware of this issue, and it is extensively detailed in the > gettext manual. > > Django's docs could easily have just said "Django uses gettext to deliver > translatable content, refer to the gettext manual for implementation > details", > but it does more to help out new users. > > > Bottom line: Django supports adding translations for as many languages > as you like, but cannot and will not magically have translations for > any languages which it does not support. You, as the website > developer, are free to add languages that Django does not support, and > doing so is a few trivial steps. > Small issues are still issues. New users such as myself might not have any experience with gettext and could, just like myself, be very surprised to learn of quirks like this. Even if it isn't Django's "fault", it scares people like me into thinking they could run into big problems with unsupported languages. It would wiser for Django to have simpler and more concrete explanations in the documentation. Nothing wrong with helping newbies learn faster. If the issue cannot be resolved then it might be beneficial to explain it better: 1. If the issue is driven by technical difficulty stemming from xgettext then don't excuse it as an attempt to prevent "a mixture of translated strings". 2. "A good starting point is to copy the Django English .po file and to translate at least some *translation strings*<http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/i18n/#term-translation-string>." is better explained by adding "from /conf/locale/en" to the corresponding folder for the new language. Cheers Uri -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
