[wp-polyglots] New default theme missing strings

[Nikolay Bachiyski]

iwan wrote:
> ...
> I'd be really keen to have the themes gettext'ed, because without it, we're effectively limiting the use 
> of different themes to English users.
> 
> I appreciate Ryan's point about keeping the themes simple so users can modify them, but to modify 
> the themes already requires some knowledge of PHP etc, and the switching and functions look more 
> complicated than the __e calls anyway.
> 
I guess most of the user are pretty familiar with the 'search&replace' 
approach. They search for the text they want to change and change it 
with whatever they have in mind. It is easy because the entire phrase is 
in single quotes and not scattered into (s)printf's strings.

  > There's already a nice list of great WP 1.5 themes available.  But 
by hardcoding language into the
> files, we're basically saying: nice templates are for English users only.  If you want to use any other 
> language, you're stuck witk Kubrick.  Nothing against Kubrick, but if every single blog in my 
> language is forced to use it, it'll be sick of it very soon.
Let us have a random non-Kubrick theme. Maybe at least a third of the 
strings in the non-Kubrick theme will not be within those in the 
Kubrick. In this case what is the profit from the internationalization 
of Kubrick?

> That's the practicality.  But I think hardcoded themes are wrong on a philosophical level too.  The 
> modern web-building ethos is to separate content from design, for very good reasons.  WordPress's 
> HTML does this excellently, one of the reasons I came to WP to begin with.  But content/design 
> separation is more than just using <em> instead of <i> -- it's a concept based on the huge benefits 
> of being able to reuse content and designs independently of each other.  By sticking language (i.e. 
> content) in the theme (i.e. design) files, we're throwing that concept out the window.  Themes are no 
> longer really reusable, and are limited to their own language.  In some cases, these languages will be 
> small communities.  What if a Welsh designer makes an absolutely mind-blowingly good theme?  
> Well, tough, the rest of the world won't be able to use it, which has a knock-on effect on WP.  The 
> more good themes are available, the more people will be attracted to WP.
> 
> I realise this dicussion is abut the default theme really, not any others.  But having a language-
> specific theme as the default will make people assume that's how they should all be.  Theme 
> designers will use the default as a starting point (rather than re-type all the PHP), so all the themes 
> will end up being language-dependent (unless language maintainers translate each and every one as 
> they appear -- any volunteers?!)
> 
> Looking at the current default theme, most of it is gettexted already.  It isn't much of a job to do the 
> rest.  And doing so means that all (or most!) of the great themes that will be produced for 1.5 will be 
> instantly reuable in all languages.  I think that's a huge Pro, in relation the relatively minor Con of 
> having slightly more complicated theme files (which will never be seen or edited by the majority of 
> WP users anyway).
> 

In the hackers list I wasted some of Ryan's time with ideas similar to 
yours. Now I support both points. And I am more and more convinced that 
we should devise some plan to shelter both gettext-ed and plain theme 
templates in WordPress. There will be good people to maintain the 
internationalization of the themes (count me too, the Kubrick is already 
done :) ). Here are some ideas:
- as Ryan suggested there will be different distribution for WP for each 
language
- each language team could choose the method for localizing the default 
theme, because in the trunc there could be the both versions of the 
default theme - gettext-ed and plain
- all other theme developers have the choice for either localizing their 
themes ot not - if they choose to add gettext support wordpress could 
just try to load the theme_name_ll_CC.po file for the current theme
- the strings for the default theme could also be in a different .pot 
file (we should not differentiate the default theme from any other)

Nikolay