[Chameleon] Language

[Godwin, Liz]

I've been muddling around with this since I posted. See inline.

>This means that you can initialize your application in either English
or
>French by:

>http://<server>/<app>/index.phtml?LANGUAGE=en-CA
>http://<server>/<app>/index.phtml?LANGUAGE=fr-CA

Can this be made case-insensitive?  I tried this on my own before your
response, but used lowercase "language" and it didn't work.  I just
assumed I couldn't do this.  Maybe this is a bug?

>Re: the legend template problem, I would suggest that you use two
>different legend templates in the two different application templates.
>They can be identical except for the metadata that they choose to
>display, and then you can place translations directly in the MAP file
on
>a layer-by-layer basis in the metadata, for instance:

>"wms_title_en" "English Title"
>"wms_title_fr" "French Title"

I'm not using a mapfile in this case, but a context document, that
points to a wms, which is in french or english.  Many (although not all)
map services are either english OR french like the National Atlas for
example.  While the above will work with custom mapfile only apps (we
have those too), it won't work for our more generic ogc apps.  I'm
thinking of adding code to my index.phtml to evaluate language and then
use a different context document if applicable.  Although I haven't
really made up my mind on this one.  I may just call each template using
a full string (specifying language) instead of changing the language
because my index.phtml is set up to accept different templates and
context documents.

I have another question about language template handling, and shared
resources.  The wait image is declared as many times as there are
languages in all templates.  If you change something in one template, it
affects that template.  But when it comes to styling (text buttons, nav
buttons) only those resources defined in the initial template are
loaded.  So...if you start the session in English, the style shared
resoures defined in english apply.  Styling defined differently in other
language templates has no effect. BUT  it is possible to change a
stylesheet between languages.  

I guess I'm saying that this is inconsistent and hard to follow.  It
would be my preference to have chameleon accept all shared resources as
they are in a template, regardless of when they are loaded.  Is
something that can be changed easily, say by me?  Is it interesting
enough to others to hope for a change in a future release?

Cheers,

Liz



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Spencer [mailto:pagameba at magma.ca]
Sent: June 17, 2004 10:43 AM
To: Godwin, Liz
Cc: chameleon at lists.maptools.org
Subject: Re: [Chameleon] Language


Liz,

the correct(?) way, or at least the way I intended it to work, is to
register templates for specific languages.  Chameleon will then choose
the correct template for the current language regardless of which
template you call the CWCExecute function with ...

The Language widget has no interface, it just provides a JavaScript
function that you can call on your own to set the language.  This
function sets the current language and submits the page.

The javascript function is setLanguage( szLanguageCode )

The form variable that tracks the current language is LANGUAGE

This means that you can initialize your application in either English or
French by:

http://<server>/<app>/index.phtml?LANGUAGE=en-CA
http://<server>/<app>/index.phtml?LANGUAGE=fr-CA

regardless of what you put in the CWCExecute call ...

Re: the legend template problem, I would suggest that you use two
different legend templates in the two different application templates.
They can be identical except for the metadata that they choose to
display, and then you can place translations directly in the MAP file on
a layer-by-layer basis in the metadata, for instance:

"wms_title_en" "English Title"
"wms_title_fr" "French Title"



Godwin, Liz wrote:

> An observation has led me to approach dual language pages differently.
> Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction If there's a
better way.
> 
> Original problem:  When changing the language of a page, the legend
> stays in the original language, English in my case, because the map
> file/context doc is not changed, only the template.  So I have an
> incomplete French page.  I understand this, because right now... when
> the language is changed the map content stays the same, and all
session
> info stored.
> 
> But I don't want to use bilingual layer titles/metadata/queries.
> 
> Plan A:  bring up the page manually so I can call the french
> template/context file myself.
> 
> Problem:  there seems to be no way to identify the language of a page.
> The "Language" widget...well..I don't know what this DOES other to
state
> what other languages are available.  For my purposes I don't see the
> point of this seeing as I have to load the language templates manually
> in the index.phtml file anyway.  Anyway, if I can identify a template
as
> english or french, (en-ca/fr-ca) then i was hoping chameleon would
> notice and apply the right language to my pop-up widgets.
> 
> Thoughts...please help!
> 
> Liz Godwin
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chameleon mailing list
> Chameleon at lists.maptools.org
> http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/chameleon

--
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
  -----------------------------------------------------------------