Inside TYPO3

3.8.7. Distribution of and contribution to language packs

This is still an open question at this point. The basic technical nature of a language pack is simply that it is a directory in typo3conf/l10n/ inside of which locallang-xml files are found in folders according to the position of their main file.

Scheme: "typo3conf/l10n/[lang]/[extkey]/[dir]+[filename]"

This leaves various possibilities of distribution and cooperation:

1. ZIP archives (download)? Language packs can be distributed as a zip file contain translations for any number of extensions. Installation of a language pack is no harder than unzipping a file in the right directory. Groups of extensions (like the core) can come bundled together or extensions can be packed alone. There is currently no public download place for such archives.

2. EM support? One could imagine that support was built into the Extension Manager:

   1. Download: EM could traverse all installed extensions for locallang*.xml files and send a http-request to some repository for possible translations located there, then writing them into typo3conf/l10n/. EM could even do this transparently based on a configuration of which language packs are wanted for the installation.

   2. Upload: EM could offer to upload local translations of extensions to a localization repository. This could be the solution for distributed translation of un-common extensions since typically one can expect the users of an extension to translate it if not already done - and thus, with a click of a button they might wish to share it.

3. CVS? Putting the whole language pack into CVS might be an idea for cooperation on a translation. But maybe there will be too many collisions, the language pack in CVS will by time contain translations for too many extensions most people don't use and it is not likely that all translators have CVS knowledge.

4. rsync? For both upload and download this could pose a lightweight alternative to CVS - especially for multiple translation servers. But it suffers many of the problems CVS has.

 

As a start I would make zip-archives, but my favourite is to integrate support in EM since:

1. It's going to be light weight http upload/download

2. EM knows which extensions are relevant on the system and can install language packs for extensions transparently as a parallel process to installing extensions.

3. Allows easy sharing of translations made all over the world (thus an answer to the missing "online translation" tool and  translations are made when needed and with understanding of what is translated)