Re: [xsl] XSLT (2) namespace safe i18n patterns

[Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>]

2009/11/24 Mike Odling-Smee <mike.odlingsmee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> xml:lang is all about mixing languages in the same file, however that
>> often causes more problems than in solves, and far better to have one
>> language per file.
>
> I would be interested to understand what complications you are referring to.

The main benefits are:

- Each set of files can be sent the translation service independently
of each other, so they can be worked on concurrently
- There is no need to pass around one large file, or any work to do
deconstructing/reconstructing that big file into whatever you give the
translators
- You can add and remove support for languages indepedently of each
other (by dropping in or remove the relevant files)
- Editing one set is not a risk to the other sets
- On a large site that supports a lot of languages, one big file just
isn't practical.

...and of course, for the poor old developer (especially one that only
speaks English like me) it's very hard to fix a typo when you have
Greek, Arabic and other texts all next to one another :)

(I've just left a widget platform project where the widget
configuration xml contains localised sentences all next to one
another, and its really painful to maintain them)

> I have a project where - perhaps misguidedly - I do have translations
> in one file. The advantages I see in doing this is that it is easy to
> see if any translations are missing

If you use keys like "welcome_text" then they are pretty easy to spot
(typically the key is returned when no translation exists for it)





-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/