[OpenLayers-Dev] Translation / Internationalisation / Localisation

[Erik Uzureau]

So I'm trying to fidget through some old list emails and I come across
this 30-mail long thread from over a month ago called "status of
translation possibilities"

And it's very long and with lots of good ideas and I thought maybe
it's a good time to retake this discussion.

Basically, having now reread all 30 of those posts, it seems like
there are two basic plans of attack on the table.

First of all, what we all seem to agree on:

 * Global setting -- not one per map
 * new file for each new language
 * new JSON object in each language file which adds a new entry to the
global hash
 * interpolation from mapbuilder
 * need to be able to change languages dynamically


...which leads us to the split.

1) Event-based -- When the language is changed in OL, an event is
fired. Those who have strings and wish to update them must listen for
the event and then take action accordingly.

2) HTML Attributes -- add 'i8ln' to each DOMElement that needs to be
changed, and when the language is changed, go through all elements and
update them.

There is a side issue of providing a facility for changing number
formats, but I think we should deal with that separately... unless
someone thinks otherwise. Please speak up.


Given how far we've already tread, it's silly to stop now. As we all
agree, this whole endeavour is practically ridiculous given the amount
of strings we actually have.

Can we get some feedback on #1 and #2 and hopefully proceed with a gameplan?

Cheers,
Erik