1   Tools Used

We use a combination of "TranslationService":http://www.zope.org/Members/efge/TranslationService and "Localizer":http://www.j-david.net/software/localizer. These products are shipped with CPS.

The CPSI18n product provides you with two tools : make_pot and update_pos to help with managing the pot/po files. (See the related section below.)

Messages are stored in a MessageCatalog object inside the Localizer instance. Hence, the translation_service object holds paths to MessageCatalog objects like "Localizer/default".

We use only the Default domain for CPSDefault and all the required products, this means that we will have only one MessageCatalog.

CPSDefault skins does not provide a 'i18n:domain' attribute or at least the "default".

For the python script file we have to use this syntax:

cpsmcat = context.translation_service

You have to use kbabel with the following configuration:

• Settings/Save/General/Encoding
• ISO-8859-15
• Do not check Keep the encoding of the file.

You may need to launch kbabel like this:

LC_ALL=fr_FR@euro kbabel&

Please see if there is any howto-l10n-xx.txt to guide you in the xx translation.

2   Guide to Prefixes Your msgid (mostly from plone i18n guideline)

msgid is a short name like the one you would use for a variable.

We added certain standard prefixes for IDs so you can understand where they are used (semantic differences are easier to spot this way), and easily locate them. When sorted, the IDs will be grouped by type automatically. Here are the standard prefixes:

• button_ - for action buttons
• heading_ - for page headings
• description_ - for the description directly below the headings
• legend_ - for the group/fieldset legends
• label_ - for labels, both field labels and input labels
• help_ - the pop-up help text
• link_ - a href link
• box_ - for content in Plone Boxes (navigation box etc)
• listingheader_ - for headers in listings (tables of class "listing", the normal way to list items in Plone)
• time_ - for time-related stuff that can be reused - "Yesterday", "Last week" etc
• batch_ - for batch-related things - like "Displaying X to Y of Z total documents"
• portal_type_ - for portal type name
• action_ - for action name
• psm_ - for portal status message
• br_ - for breadcrumbs you may set from scratch

There are also Product-specific prefixes, e.g. the Product ZWiki has a heading, then the prefix would be |zwiki_heading_edit_wiki_page|. This prevents collision between Message IDs.

3   How to Translate

• ZPT static sentences:

  Use msgid!

  <p i18n:translate="help_join">Becoming a member gives [...]</p>
  

  Be sure to be specific, it would have been a mess to use "help_message" in the former example.

• ZPT dynamic sentences:

  Msgids are not always convenient. For sentences like:

  <h2 i18n:translate="">
    heading_reject_publication_of
    <span tal:replace="here/title_or_id" i18n:name="item_id">Item</span>
  </h2>
  

  Here the msgid to translate is heading_accept_publication_of ${item_id}.

  For dynamic keywork like:

  <span tal:omit-tag="" tal:content="items/action" i18n:translate="">
        Action
  </span>
  

  Notice: It won't be neccesarly to translate this msgid in the po files since the content will be replaced by the dynamically calculated value.

• ZPT tags attributes:

  On form tags, use a value attribute to set the msgid:

  <input type="submit" i18n:attributes="value" value="button_search" />
  

• Javascript i18n:

  There is a tal define in the main_template named cpsmcat:

  cpsmcat nocall:here/Localizer/default;
  

  Example:

  <a href="http://www.nuxeo.com/"
    tal:attributes="onclick python:'return window.confirm(\'%s\')' % (cpsmcat('description_confirm_jump'), )">go to nuxeo</a>
  

• For the portal status message:

  Typically, this sentence is sent as is by a redirect call. a i18n:translate="" attribute is place in main_template so the entire sentence is stored (no msgid).

  As a consequence, do not use computed sentences like "5 items deleted." or "please correct the following fields: [...]". Keep it simple like psm_item_deleted or psm_error_found

• For portal types:

  Given the portal_type id, use 'portal_type_%s_title' % id as the title and 'portal_type_%s_description" % id as the description. For instance, the portal type newsdocument is given portal_type_newsdocument_title as the title.

  Don't bother for other products you try to integrate if they have a title in plain english. We want msgids in CPSDefault at least.

• For portal types actions:

  Actions should use msgid as well: typically named "action_view" or "action_reply".

• For dates:

  [XXX how do we specify and where do we write the date format?]

• CPS proxies:

  Proxies handle translation by themselves so don't place i18n:translate="" around the title.

4   Rules to Generate pot/pos Files and Updating Them

Included in the CPSI18n product you'll find 2 tools automatizing the msgids gathering and updating:

1. make_pot: Initialization (see the scenario below).
2. update_pos: If your ZPT's change or you want to add some msgids.

Check the doc of CPSI18n in order to make these tools work.

The idea is to parse the ZPTs directly, extracting the content of the i18n tags and generating the pot/po files for a product.

This process basically uses: GNU Gettext, OpenTAL, pax (XML parser). You'll need GNU Gettext version >= 0.11.4-7 installed on the computer where you will launch the scripts make_pot and update_pos.

Set ISO 8859-15 encoding in your po editor (Whatever the tool) !! The characters with accents will not be accepted at diplay page time if you don't. ;)

update_pos and make_pot can handle a blacklist pot file, removing all msgid that are present in then blacklist pot file, this is usefull when you share a mcat with another products and you don't want to duplicate existing translation.

To use this feature you need to edit/create a file named .blacklist_pot in i18n repository and set the content to the path of the pot file like '../../CPSDefault/i18n/cpsdefault.pot', by doing this the update_pos command will remove all msgid found in your template and custom that exist in the ../../CPSDefault/i18n/cpsdefault.pot file.

5   Process Outline

Before starting create a subdirectory i18n within your product directory.

$ cd ./i18n

$ update_pos

make_pot <file|directory>

6   Within CPS3

• ONE domain and ONE MessageCatalog (default) for the CPSDefault and the compulsory products following the guide for the internationalization of CPS3. The compulsory products should use .blacklist_pot file refering ../../CPSDefault/i18n/cpsdefault.pot file to not duplicate translation.
• ONE domain and ONE MessageCatalog for the others products, note that actions msgid should be define in the Default domain.
• More generally: don't put anything in the default catalog until you checked the msgids are according to the above nomenclature.
• Waiting for some feedbacks about domains in our case ??? Don't see really the usefulness.