Inherit languages

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canonknipser
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Name: Frank Jakobs
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Inherit languages

Post by canonknipser »

There are some languages having variants, like regional variants or formal variants, e.g.:
  • en british english
    • en-us us-american-english
  • es spanish
    • es-mx mexican spanish
    • es-x-tu spanish (casual)
  • de german
    • de-x-sie german (formal)
and many more
In most cases, only a few words are different from the basic form, and as of that, only a few language string differ between "parent" and "child" language pack.
So, the idea is, introducing a language inheritance working the same way as style inheritance.
This would give translaters some advantages:
  1. Language variants are easier to publish, because you can condense them to the differences, no need for the translation team to check if all
  2. On upgrading phpBB versions, most commonly only the basic language pack has to be updated
  3. If all language packs inherit from english (like most styles from prosilver), there will not be ugly looking uppercase language variables in the user's front end, but "correct" english text
Greetings, Frank
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English is not my native language - no support via PM or mail
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CHItA
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Posts: 166
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2008 10:27 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Inherit languages

Post by CHItA »

As of 3.2 this is already (at least in part) done. So the third point is invalid as it can only happen if there is no english language string or the language file is not loaded (thus it would be a bug in core, and not something that should be added as a feature).

As for the other parts, it should not be too hard to implement, however, i strongly doubt that it would make translators job any easier as instead of monitoring the language changes which each release (which we provide for translators) the translators should monitor how their base package changes, which might be more difficult if the packages are maintained by different people.
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