Style and Template Localizations

Howdy all!

Right now, the name that users see for styles is the same as the
internal identifier we use for that style. This has several effects,
one of which is that we can't easily localize style names, even the
standard ones. I propose the following improvement, as a part of my
Summer of Code work: (See bug [1])

Add an additional property called "label" to styles, so that we'd have
<style name="..." label="..."
 - This requires that we keep the Name something human-readable so that
files are backward-compatible. User-created styles would default to
having Name==Label.
 - When loading a document with just "name" there, we default label to
be the same.

Upon loading/displaying document (not sure where exactly), we would use
the locale-specific normal.awt file to find the label to use for the
default style names. This means that if a document only used default
styles, every user would see those style labels in their own language
while being able to share documents across locales. The currently
in-use style label would probably be the one saved out to be used if no
locale-specific awt is available.
Options: For stock styles always save the English/canonical label, or
the label that was loaded from the file: either solution prevents
unnecessary document changes, which might be important if someone is
using a VCS to store documents (cleaner diffs).

A vaguely-related concern is that of template localization. Right now,
we have just a few templates, and all in English. There is a bug with
translations of those templates into Dutch, but as we don't have a
mechanism for handling template translation, they're not being used.
[2] Templates vaguely fall into my SoC work as well, so it would be
nice to find a solution here too. The 'simple solution', as least as it
appears to me, is to have translated files stored as .awt-nl_NL for
instance, and then if a template for the user's locale is available, use
it instead of the .awt one, which would serve as the en_US template for
shipping templates and a fallback. User-saved templates would still be
called .awt, or perhaps .awt-currentlocale - not sure about this part.
Ideally, I'd make a new dialog for the "New from Template" allowing a
bit more useful display and perhaps the selection of a template that is
not matching the user's default locale as a special option.

Anyway, posting this to request feedback before I start coding these
bits. If you have comments, concerns, better ideas, or hints on
where/how to get started efficiently, please do not hesitate to reply :)

Ryan

[1] http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9929
[2] http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7928
Received on Wed May 28 22:45:01 2008