From: Andreas Schwarz <usenet@...>
Date: 2004-03-08T07:39:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Looking for HTML templating system

Shu-yu Guo wrote:
> I have also chosen to write a forum in Ruby, and the solution I came up with
> for i18n is that the templates should not include program-determined
> user-visible strings. What that basically means is that the task of
> translating the message isn't in the template files but in the program.

Yes, of course.

> For example, using an Amrita-like system, I would do something like
> 
> 	exp_data = { :login_string => i18n("Login") }
> 	# Expand <span id="login_string"/> or somesuch.
> 
> where i18n is just a wrapper for gettext from the Ruby GetText library.

I didn't take a closer look at gettext, what are the main advantages
over a simple hash-based system?

> As for different languages via preferences, I originally thought of doing this
> but a friend has convinced me that it's pointless to have a forum run on more
> than one language at one time.
> A forum run in Germany will have all its posts in German anyhow,
> what's the point of having the menus in English (and
> vice-versa)?

I originally intended to hard-code the language setting in the config
file, but as I plan to add an english section to my forum I thought it
could be useful to make it selectable for the user.