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

[Claus Priisholm]

Hi Laurent

The language-specific subdirectory is a nice way of handling the 
problem - especially if it is anticipated that there will be 
differences in the structure at some point. This deals very nicely 
content and then have language dependent  proporties to control 
whatever locale dependent content there is in the template files.

An alternative would be to have multiple bodies (there is a thread on 
this in this years mailing archive) and then have the templates pick 
the right body based on the language. I haven't tried this and I am not 
sure if there could be implications, performance wise or other issues 
with other utilities (such as the search module) which work with files 
rather than bodies.

The problem with both approaches, as you mention, is mostly in the area 
of management - keeping the content in sync. And this is especially a 
problem in cases where you have multiple persons involved in the 
process  (just in case that one user is not fluent in all european 
languages :-)

I was involved in developing a custom-built CMS for a pan-european 
sports site where we had to anticipate up to 15 languages and editors 
placed throughout europe. The solution we ended up making was along the 
lines of multiple bodies, i.e. an article would be present in one or 
more languages, and if the country manager decided to publish an 
article for his language, he would then have to make sure it was 
translated (or accept that it would appear in the default language). 
Apart from being tightly integrated, i.e. the UI would know what parts 
was language dependent and show all language variations of a given 
article to the editors, the key was keeping editors posted when 
relevant changes had taken place and he or she should take action upon 
it.

I think it would be possible to have at least some control by using the 
workflow stuff to at least notify the individual language editors about 
the fact that changes has taken place. Besides trying it out I haven't 
worked with it, so I am not sure it'll do everything one needs, but it 
may be the place to add functionality in order to better support 
multi-lingual sites. Of course it would be convenient to have the 
workflow integrated a bit more such that a resource is not just either 
published or not, but rather progresses through a number of explicit 
steps - in this case it would be 'released for translation' in which 
case it would have to wait for all related documents to reach the same 
state before being published (though this kind of rigorous control will 
not work in all organizations :-)

Claus

On 26/11-2003, at 17.00, Laurent Gauthier wrote:

> 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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Claus Priisholm
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