The LanguageConverter is a poorly-understood part of mediawiki among
mediawiki engineers.
Is there any chance that we could organize a set of presentations or
talks by the various communities who use it, in order to lay the
ground work for an informed discussion of its future and/or
replacement?
In particular, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedias_in_Multi-writing_System
lists 30-40 different wikis who either are using LanguageConverter
functionality or who would like to use it. I have a reasonable grasp
on the linguistic background of (generously speaking) 4 of them. How
can we better understand the issues and communities involved?
Perhaps something could be arranged at Wikimania this year? Do we
know if a decent cross-section of variant-using wiki users will be
present?
--scott
--
(http://cscott.net)
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Siebrand Mazeland
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 12:09 AM
Subject: Implementation JSON based localisation format for MediaWiki nearly
completed
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Long! tl;dr is in the first two paragraphs.
With the merging of https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/122787/ , probably
the largest patch set for MediaWiki ever (+548314, -714438), MediaWiki core
is now using JSON for localisation of interface messages, per a recently
adopted RfC[1]. Thanks Krinkle/Timo for reviewing!
Please be aware that if you have open patch sets touching *.i18n.php
messages files or MessagesXx.php files, you will have to update your patch
sets to match the new file layout and format.
In December 2013, the first MediaWiki extensions have already been migrated
to use the JSON format. Today, Antoine/hashar enabled a JSON linter on the
jslint job that runs on many Gerrit repositories' patch sets.
Since last week I've started to migrate first all MediaWiki extensions that
are used by WIkimedia to use JSON i18n. At this time, 1.23wmf20 has about
50% of its extensions using the updated format. Migration of two extensions
is taking a little longer[2], but Matt Flaschen is helping with that, and I
expect that to be resolved soon.
Migration of all extensions has been going very smoothly - it's about 80%
done. With the help of reedy/Sam Reed, Raimond Spekking/Raymond, Niklas
Laxström/Nikerabbit and Adam Wight, so far 427 patch sets related to this
project have already been reviewed and merged[3], 40 await review and I
expect some 90 more to be submitted for the project to be completed.
Thanks also go to Roan Kattouw/Catrope for implementation of parts of the
RfC together with Niklas, to Niklas for rewriting LocalisationUpdate to
support the JSON format and more, and all who helped draft the RfC,
including James Forrester, Santhosh Thottingal, David Chan, Ed Sanders,
Robert Thomas Moen, and those who deserve credit but I have forgotten to
mention.
Once all migrations are complete, I'll be doing a full export from
translatewiki.net, which will cause a lot of JSON files to be touched, but
will mostly update encoding (full UTF-8) and add a newline at enf of file
where missing.
What's next? With this project almost completed, next order of business is
creating an RfC on where to go with the data that now remains in the
MessagesXx.php files (like date formatting, fallback, directionality,
namespace names, special page names, etc.) and localisation for special
page names, magic words and namespace names that are still being
implemented using $wgExtensionMessagesDirs. Maybe this is something we
could discuss and prototype during the hackathon. Please let me know if
this is something you'd like to work on.
Again, thanks for the help, and apologies for the inconvenience these
changes may have caused you!
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Localisation_format
[2]
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/status:open+topic:json-i18n-special,n,z
[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/status:merged+topic:json-i18n,n,z
Cheers!
--
Siebrand Mazeland
Kitano ICT
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand