DocumentationLanguageLinking:Wikka

Revision [6759]

This is an old revision of DocumentationLanguageLinking made by DarTar on 2005-03-16 13:11:49.

Linking to documentation-pages in other languages

Since we have more then one language now, we should think about the necessary links between the pages.

My thought was something like http://www.openformats.org, i.e. you have a list of other languages shown somewhere in the page.

My solution would be an action, like otherlanguages which you would insert into a page only once and which would display the links to the other pages.

Comments?

Why not, but to do this we first need a clean server (possibly with limited ACL access to users willing to participate in the documentation project) and a strict respect of the naming conventions. I suggest we postpone this after the setup of a dedicated documentation server, like - say - wikkadocs.jsnx.com (any suggestions for a better name). JsnX, you think this is feasible ? -- DarTar

Are you asking if it is feasible to have a new subdomain named something like wikkadocs.jsnx.com? Sure. By the way, I'm deferring to you, Nils, JW and others on multilanguage decisions. Just tell me what you need for resources and I'll make it happen. -- JsnX

documentation.jsnx.com ? Yes, maybe it's better to wait with this, but why not collect some ideas? --NilsLindenberg

The 'quick and dirty' openformats approach

Openformats.org adopts alphanumeric tags for identifying nodes and their language: for instance en, fr, it are the top level nodes in English, French and Italian; en0 is the first subnode of the English version, it20 is the first subsubnode of the third subnode of the Italian version etc.
There are also a bunch of pages whose tags are camelcase-formatted, but they follow the same convention: enLinking is the English altlang of frLinking etc.

I post here for reference the modifications I made to Wikka at openformats to support horizontal links between corresponding pages in different languages (in ODPian jargon they are called altlangs). This is definitely not a suggestion for an action to implement on this server (the code is dirty and tailored to the conventions in use at OF), but just a possible source of inspiration.

1. Store language definitions in your wiki
Create an ordinary page called Languages containing language names and their code:

de Deutsch
en English
fr Français
it Italiano
mg Malagasy

2. Create the action to automatically build altlangs
Add the lang.php action to ./actions:

<?php
//get current page
$cpage = $this->GetPageTag();
$ctag = substr($cpage, 0, 2); #extract tag
$cnode = substr($cpage, 2); #extract node
if ($cpage=="main") {
$ctag = "en";
$cnode = "";
}
$page = $this->LoadPage('Languages');
$output = $this->Format($page["body"]);
$couples = explode("\n" , $output);
if (ereg("[A-Z](.*)", $ctag)) { #all public pages in openformats start with a lowercase letter
// page is not public
// display default menu bar
foreach ($couples as $language) {
$l = explode(" " , $language);
$tag = strip_tags($l[0]);
$lang = strip_tags($l[1]);
print $this->Format("[[".$tag." ".$lang."]]")." ";
}
} else {
// page is public
// display navigation menu
foreach ($couples as $language) {
$l = explode(" " , $language);
$tag = strip_tags($l[0]);
$lang = strip_tags($l[1]);
if ($tag == $ctag) {
print $this->Format("**".$lang."**")." ";
} else {
print $this->Format("[[".$tag.$cnode." ".$lang."]]")." ";
}
}
}
?>

3. Modify the header action

Add the following code to ./actions/header.php at the end of the code, immediately after the closing </div>:

CategoryDevelopment

Wikka : DocumentationLanguageLinking

Revision [6759]

Linking to documentation-pages in other languages

The 'quick and dirty' openformats approach