Now that we have an object cache, I think we can move toward getting rid
toward Language??.php entirely, the $wgAllMessages arrays at first and the
rest that's in there later.
Here's a rough implementation strategy:
- Multilang support is maintained on Meta, but instead of Language??.php
pages, people edit MediaWiki pages
- The user can set in the preferences which language they want to use (as
per Nikola's patch). Bonus points: Detect language prefs from browser and
set default UI language accordingly.
- For the different languages we append a suffix to the title, e.g.
MediaWiki:Gnunote.en. The suffix is added automatically when no suffix is
provided, so MediaWiki:Gnunote would go to Gnunote.en if you have that set
in your prefs
- We get rid of the message arrays entirely. Instead, the installation
package contains a dump of the MediaWiki namespace from Meta. This is
loaded into the DB on install. $wgUseDatabaseMessages is required, not
optional.
Note that the language suffixes would only work for the MediaWiki:
namespace, not for the Template: namespace -- mixing languages here would
be a bad idea.
How does that sound? Have I forgotten something important?
Having done this, we could then think about throwing all languages into
one DB (with different tables like CUR.de, RECENTCHANGES.en etc.), as a
first step toward true multilang integration.
Regards,
Erik
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