Hi Andreas,

> > The ~600 method changeset which converts the UI to use translated 
> > strings will be incorporated soon... probably tomorrow (Saturday) 
> > evening.  It sounds like the "explicit" approach has been 
> > more or less agreed upon by the people who have an interest
> > in translation issues. 
> 
> Oops. As a matter of fact, I missed Stef's post - so make that "most" of the
> people who have an interest in translation issues ;-)
> 
> Hey Stef, just out of curiosity: What were the major arguments for and
> against each approach? Can you give a brief summary of the discussion?


Implicit Translation:

(+) We have to modify less code. A quick statistics over Small-Land
image give: 70 senders of #format: versus 611 senders of #translated. 
NOTE: The Small-Land image is based on 3.5 and a lot of removed stuff is
translated (example: Scamper) so the number are not exact for a 3.7
image.

(-) The translation is "installed" and it's not dynamic. In the current
Babel implementation the default language comes from the Project, it
allows to have different projects in different languages.  But if you
need another way to set the default language (like different languages
per users in a web-application) only changing String>>translated will do
the job.  Also this "installing" procedure will break when the methods
are recompiled, etc.

(-) We need to tag (more or less) 2000 strings using the screening tool.
It's a simple but large job to do.

(-) Uniformity.  To make a piece of the image translatable is needed to
change some code and to tag other strings.

(+) Transparency.  Some of us talked about the *benefit* of programming
without taking care of the translation.



Explicit Translation:

(-) More code to touch.

(+) More dynamic.

(+) It's already done and tested for months in Small-Land's image.

(+) Straight-forward concept: Do you want to translated a piece of code?
Avoid visible string concatenations using #format: and send #translated
to every visible string. (point).

(+) Transparency.  Some other talked about the in *inconvenience* of
programming without taking care of the translation.


> Cheers,
>   - Andreas

-- 
Diego Gomez Deck
http://www.small-land.org