Otto Wyss wrote:
> Paul Novitski wrote:
>
> I formulated my question in general since I couldn't find an other
> message here about supporting multiple languages.
>
>> http://www.w3.org/International/articles/
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/
>>
>> http://php.net/setlocale
>>
> Thanks a lot, these are good points for reading.
>>
>> 1) Switching language downloads a new version of the current page,
>> generally with the same markup but new text. Example:
>> http://partcon.ca/
>>
> I'll favor this way especially if several languages have to be provided.
>
>> In both cases I store the text in database tables that contain a
>> language field I can select on to match the user's request.
>>
> I wonder if retrieving static texts from the database draws too much
> performance. I know from somebody who stores texts in large data arrays
> an uses shared memory, yet I haven't figured it out how.
>
> I consider storing static texts as defines and just load a different
> definition file when the user switches language. Is this practical?
don't go down the define('LANG_KEY', 'lang string value'); route - defines
are comparatively SLOW to create. IF you go down the road of loading in text
from 'per lang' files I would suggest using an array as the storage mechanism:
$Lang = array(
'LANG_KEY' => 'lang string value',
// .. etc
);
assoc array are much less heavy to create.
also consider that there are, imho, 2 kinds of language specific data:
1. 'static' values - button texts, [error] messages - these are specified
during site/application
design.
2. 'dynamic' values - document titles, headers, content - these are specified
by the owner/user during
the lifetime of the site/application
for the rest I'll just say 'ditto' to most of what the other list members
replied :-)
>
> O. Wyss
>
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