Karma/i18n

Rough plan for implementing i18n for Karma

Requirements

• Integrate with pootle
• Handle strings inside code and html markup

 Examples 
 $("#someDiv").text(gettext("Hello World"));
 
  <div>Hello <strong>W</strong>orld</div>
  

• All strings stored in one file per locale, messages.json
• All message identifiers must be unique within an a lesson
• Accommodating numeric, currency, and date formatting is not an immediate requirement

General Strategy

JavaScript Strings

We try to follow a subset of the gettext api quite closely. After including jquery.i18n.js you can use the following gettext functions in your javascript scripts:

• $.i18n.gettext('text to be translated') or $. _('text to be translated'): to translate a simple string
• $.i18n.ngettext('a car', 'multiple cars', n): to choose a pluralized form depending on n
• $.i18n.pgettext('context', 'text to be translated'): this is useful if you are writing plugins. E.g. in ui.kFooter.js the context is '$.ui.kFooter'.

Remarks:

• you can add the statement var _ = $._; at the beginning of your $(document).ready function and then use _('message') without needing to add the $. However the name of the function you are calling should be _, gettext, ngettext or pgettext. Otherwise the strings can not be automatically be extracted with xgettext.
• the arguments to the different calls should be string literals. Otherwise xgettext will not be able to extract the messages to be translated.

More information: http://forum.jquery.com/topic/locale-information-should-be-separated-from-plugins

HTML Strings

The Python library itools automates the job of parsing the HTML and creating the PO files. There are already concrete experiments, which you can find here.

Things which still need to be done:

• Dynamically change out strings per locale on page load (HIGH PRIORITY)
• A well-defined workflow
  • integrate the JavaScript i18n within the workflow.
• Documentation.

I'm still actively working on it. Questions, comments, suggestions > km0r3 AT sugarlabs DOT org .