[Zip] Initial Mail after ZIP revival at EuroZope Conference

[Juan David Ibáñez Palomar]

apologies for replying so late..

> >But, where ZBabel Towers live? in the ZODB?
> 
> Right now I have a ZODB and SQL implementation. There is a general API for 
> the ZBabel Tower now, so that File System based or even a XML Babel Tower 
> should be no problem anymore.
> 

Ok, but you still need a ZBabel Tower in the ZODB, right?

Then, how do you internationalize the first management screen? the
one that adds a new instance of any object.


> >Translations for text that lives in the file system must be in the file
> >system too.
> >
> >And it has not too much sense to store this kind of text in message
> >catalogs, since these texts are usually too much long to be reusable.
> 
> Well, most of the file system based DTML documents actually contain very 
> little translatable information. On the other hand, if something like that 
> goes into the Zope core, we should think about having all DTML in the ZODB 
> in anyway. It looks clumsy to me that you have to store some DTML in the FS 
> and the rest in the ZODB...
> 

Is it? I don't thik so.

A web site/application is different than any other applications
such as word processors. A web site/application is different than
a Zope product. Zope itself and Zope products are more like word
processors, to develop them the "standard" tools are used (text
editors, CVS, etc..), it's important that everything is in the
file sytem so you can use these tools, including DTML files.

To understand the difference between a web site and Zope/Zope
products is critical.

So right now I think ZBabel doesn't provides any acceptable way
to internationalize Zope products and Zope itself. zzLocale is
still better at this since it, at least, stores the translations
in the file system and doesn't needs any object in the database
to work; but the way it does it is not very as we've already
discussed.

Actually, the lack of good solutions to internationalize Zope
products was the main reason I started to develop the Localizer
several months ago. It still doesn't solves all the problems,
but helps.

And this exactly the feature that must be in the core.

There're still several open issues about this (such as where
to store the .mo files), and I'll develop them in the wiki as
soon as I have time.



> I admit that there are things missing in the ZBabel Tower, but they are 
> independent of the storage issues:
> - Garbage Collection
> - Better export/import filters (for example: XML and .pot files)
> - Grouping of phrases (this way you can distribute modules like Calendar-, 
> AddressBook-, JobDescriptions-, ... Translations)
> 

Garbage collection is a problem of message catalogs, I also have it.

When it comes to products (in the file system) the gettext tools do
a good work.

But if we're talking about web sites the answer is different, message
catalogs can't be the central piece of the solution, they still are
helpful but you can't build a big multilingual web site with them.

In the approach of Localizer (with LocalContent and LocalPropertyManager)
garbage simply doesn't exists.

The grouping of phrases is the problem of context, another problem that
LocalContent/LocalPropertyManager already solves.

Message catalogs are not the solution for everything.


Regards,
jdavid