[opencms-dev] Support for multilingual content...?

[Olli Aro]

Hi Laurent,

I was trying to modify opencms to cope with this couple of months ago. I
tried to achieve this by having multiple bodies for a single file and then
use naming convension e.g. for a page /test.html you would have
/system/bodies/test.html_en (English content body) and
/system/bodies/test.html_fr (French content body). First it seemed that I
could easily modify workplace classes to handle this (I modified classes
responsible for locking, renaming, copy and move,create,delete...), however
I had to go deeper and deeper to opencms core and finally decided that this
required modifying too many core classes... The biggest problem was with the
publish method and link checking, if I remember correctly. Plus also I
realised the problem with file properties, meta data, as you mentioned in
your post.

So now I am back using parallel content structures and advice my clients to
put a manual content management process in place to ensure that all branches
are synchronised:(

Regards,

Olli

> -----Original Message-----
> From: opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org
> [mailto:opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org]On Behalf Of Laurent Gauthier
> Sent: 26 November 2003 16:00
> To: opencms-dev at opencms.org
> Subject: [opencms-dev] Support for multilingual content...?
>
>
> I have consulted previous threads on the need to support multilingual
> resources (ex: to be able to create a page and specify its content for
> different languages/locales) but no definite conclusion/direction seems
> to emerge from these threads.
>
> The current way to handle multilingual content appears to be to create
> parallel folder trees for each desired language. However, this doesn't
> allow explicit references between the various local-specific versions of
> a given page. If one updates a page for one locale, the system cannot
> "know" or "guess" that the corresponding page(s) in the other languages
> need to be revised or updated.
>
> One way to address this would be to have a resource (a CmsFile) contain
> a Collection (Map?) of contents, one per desired locale.
>
> When creating a page, you could specify which locales are to be
> supported.
> When editing the page, you could switch between locales and edit
> localized content for the file/resource.
> When viewing/previewing a page, the system would display the content
> based on the locale in the Session.
>
> Some outstanding issues are things like: should it be possible to
> localize metadata (keywords, description, title etc)?
>
> Looking at the OpenCMS source and JavaDoc, it appears that this would
> have far reaching implications and require substantial refactoring of
> core classes and may also affect the way OpenCMS retrieves content from
> the VFS (essentially, all content acccess would need to be Locale
> sensitive). In other words, it may be quite disruptive to the system as
> a whole.
>
> Another way to address the requirement may be to have a special kind of
> "Link" ressource type (a MultilingualLink). One that contains references
> to locale-specific ressources. When creating/editing such a Link, one
> would specify the desired Locales to be supported and possibly,
> automatically create (if needed) files for each desired Locale in the
> proper folders. When following a MultlingualLink the actual URL would be
> based on the locale of the Session. I am not sure, at this point, how we
> could/should manage and expose dependencies between target pages with
> this approach (maybe with a special LinkEditor that supports editing the
> Link targets...). Would it be possible/desirable for a "target"
> page/resource to "signal" the link(s) that point to it that it has
> changed and that other, localized versions of the same page need
> revision?
>
> My questions are thus the following:
> - Do others agree there is a need to support multilingual content?
> - Has anybody come up with a tentative design/solution that could
> quickly and easily meet most of the requirements without too much
> disruption?
> - Is there a plan/roadmap to move towards support for multilingual
> content in OpenCMS?
>
> Feedback, comments, suggestions etc are welcome.
>
> Laurent
>
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