Using two languages at the same time?

[Bundy]

Anyone,

Since Canada is consider a multilingual country, I want to alternate between English and French, depending on what the photographer's prefered language is. I can't seem to find where to set the language for each exhibition.

Is it possible to use two different languages in the same gallery. Some exhibitions in English and the others in French.

Bundy

[TomKa]

We still need a french translation of the User Interface strings of EEngine, if you want to be a volunteer for this little translation project....
It's not difficult, maybe three hours of work with a little bit of testing. I can mail you the How-to, really easy!!!

All available translations can be downloaded from http://download.boolbo.com/pafiledb.php?action=category&id=2 , the french version is still missing!

[Bundy]

I don't personally speak French, though if I can find out how to get two languages working within the same gallery, I will have to seek out someone for the translation. If so, I will post the download online for everyone else.

Bundy

[TomKa]

1. Create the new language in Admin - Settings - Languages.

2. After you have added a language to the database, you will need to make copies of
/gallery/languages/eng to /gallery/languages/xxx
This is only for the User Interface.

3 Translation: I'm using UltraEdit. You can open two windows, at left the original file in english, at the right the same file to translate from the directory /gallery/languages/xxx

You have the line numbers at your disposition in UltraEdit and you can set the contemporary scrolling of the two files and also the line wrap. Now it's rather easy to translate the strings. If you don't know exactly what to fill in for the translation, you can always verify the translated strings in EE and change the string later.

Primary language: this is the default language of the gallery.
Public language: this language version will be visible in public.
Lazy language: If there is no description in the gallery the script will display the descriptions of the primary language. You can test it at http://www.panoviews.com/foto/ , here i have set the finnish language to "Lazy".

PS: Don't forget to install the german language in your gallery for my german speaking aunt in Vancouver... 8-)

[Bundy]

Pekka,

Is it possible to get two languages running at the same time? I still can't find anywhere that will allow me to set a different langauge for specific exhibitions. Changing the language default in the language editor, changes everything to be one or the other.

Is it not possible to set a different default language for each exhibition? Can a default language selector be placed in the exhibition editor to make this possible. OR Maybe a "set exhibition languages" similar to the "set exhibition groups", which would allow the admin to determine which exhibition uses which default language. The language selector within the public area is great, but it doesn't allow for language specific exhibitions.

How hard would this be to add?

Bundy

[TomKa]

You can set a specific link for one gallery like

http://www.panoviews.com/foto/list.php?exhibition=1&pass=public&lang=ger

for an exhibition in german or

http://www.panoviews.com/foto/list.php?exhibition=1&pass=public&lang=ita

for the same exhibition in italian.

[Bundy]

That might work, though what file would you suggest to edit to get the exhibition links on the gallery index to work accordingly.

Bundy

[TomKa]

On our future website with various languages I will set the link to the gallery like this, so if a user has selected the german language version of the website I will send him directly to the german version of the gallery when he clicks on the link for the gallery.

You need to set nothing in EE, just get the links of the specific galleries (with their languages) from the address bar of your browser. From here i copy the link and integrate them into the href of the specific link to gallery in my website.

[Bundy]

The only problem with this way is that it still needs to be all one or the other. How can this switch be done automatically from within each exhibition.

Between English and the French could be done as you say, but the other reason I wanted to have two languages was so that I could have two versions of English and possibly two versions of French.

1. That uses vocabulary geared towards "PHOTOGRAPHERS" as Pekka already has it. The wording within certain exhibitions would say "photographers this", "photographers that", "photos", etc...

2. The others would use vocabulary that is geared towards "ARTISTS". The wording would say "artists this", "artists that", "paintings", etc...

Since I have a mixture of PHOTOGRAPHERS and ARTISTS, the vocabulary and terms would be more appropriate if they were EXHIBITOR specific.

Any suggestions?

Bundy

[TomKa]

What about a second gallery on a second MySQL database? If you have to separate galleries you can tweak every gallery for your own needs.

[Bundy]

Can EE interconnect between two gallery so that the exhibition lists show both lists?

Bundy

[Pekka]

I'll comment:

Forcing language to change automatically between exhibitions is not a good idea. Simply because when user has selected a language it should not change after that under any circumstances. You have a language selection and it is very easy to use it should not be too hard to pick your own from it. TomKa's linking examples were good.

A need for having several translations of SAME language and select a variation for each exhibition is a different matter. This could be accomplished only by adding this feature by coding it in. But there would be logical problems: it would mean combined exhibitions should really be disabled in that mode because I cannot see way to interlace translations on one common display. There are surely many other conflicting logic issues to be solved.

Keeping two or more EE's is possible, on separate databases. Trying to get them "talk" to each other: as everything that is programmed it can be done. Doing this just for getting some esoteric language features is an overkill. Sharing exhibitions and item data between several EE's might be cool, but most likely a slow performer and defintely extemely big code change and long test phase, so please do not ask for that at this stage. It would need a big request flood to get me into that now, and it would mean severely delaying developement of most of the widely requested features like lightbox.

It is many times possible to do lots of things by creative use of existing features. For example, if you need some exhibitions with photographers and some with artists, Why not use artist for both, as photographer can surely be called an artist, also you'd may want to use "work by", "image", "5 latest titles". Use exhibition groups "XXX paintings" and "YYY photos", they are displayed in top of each exhibition. I'm sure you can come up with pretty decent general terms compromise translation.

[Bundy]

I do apologize for the request. I was purely digging around to see whether or not it was possible. Yes, I do agree that it is really overkill to just have a few esoteric language features.

Before reading your latest comments, I had already decided to do exactly as you suggested:

- using artist for both, is definitely no problem for photographers

- using the wording, "work by", "image", "5 latest titles" also is already in place.

- using exhibition groups would be nice, however the existing group indexstyle is not consistent with the latest indexstyle #6 you added to the EE1.5b5 update. Unless you already replied to the one of my earlier posting asking for a compliment to indexstyle #6, I will probably just find a way to make the regular exhibitions work.

Thanks Pekka and TomKa for the excellent feedback. Sometimes you have to have someone else tell you how silly a request is for you to actually realize it yourself.

On to continuing to get the most out of EE. There are so many things it can do that I haven't even come across yet. Fun, fun , fun... :)

Bundy