On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:51:33 +0100, James R. Johnson wrote:
I was wondering, would it be possible to have all wikis in alanguage to share the same messages, without having to retranslate them for each new wiki? So the Deutsch or Anglo-Saxon wikis would have to change the messages from English only once, instead of 4 or more times?
I believe you have misunderstood the translation process, which I believe is roughly as follows [please don't take this as gospel and blame me if someone else tells you it's *not* like this]: 1) the messages from an already-available language are used as the "basis" for a new one 2) the messages are translated; I think a lot of this is done by editing the "live" versions in the MediaWiki: namespace of a new wiki, simply so that the wiki can get started in other ways in the meantime 3) the translated messages are saved into a file called LanguageXX.php, where XX is the language code of the new translation; I'm not sure, but I think there are scripts which export the current translations from a live wiki to create this file - if not, there should be ;) 4) the new LanguageXX.php becomes part of the MediaWiki software, available for anyone who wishes to set their wiki - or, indeed, any user who wants their interface translated - to that language.
LanguageDe.php (German) has existed "forever" (it undoubtedly predates customisation via the MediaWiki: namespace); an Anglo-Saxon file will presumably come into existence as soon as the translation is more-or-less complete.
To finish off the answer to your question, though - sharing *customised* messages between projects would probably be a bad idea, since the commnities of, say, the English Wikipedia and the English Wikibooks, wouldn't necessarily come to the same agreements on what certain messages should say, even though they are presenting information in the same place and in the same language. (One might, for instance, want to put in a link to a particular policy which didn't exist for the other) This is, in essence, the original purpose of having the per-wiki MediaWiki: namespace as well as the generic per-language LanguageXX.php files.
I hope this answers your thoughts adequately.