Language fallback option

Hello!

I'am working on translation new OpenCart into russian. It's not so hard due to OpenCart's clear MVC design

But there is another problem with quite fast development of new versions. Every day а lot of small pieces of code may change, so tranlators has only two options: folow every changes in svn, or wait long time between releases.

I suggest a great idea to improve localization support in OC.
I named it "Language fallback = on".

Here is small description.

For every language teplate we do
1. Load fallback language at first ( i.e. english text from language/english tpl, or language_id==1 from SQL queries)
2. Fill neded PHP Arrays in fallback strings
3. Load current language
4. Override all PHP Arrays with actual strings

In fallback mode we may start our shop with only 10% complete tranllation. Also possible run multilanguage shop with full fresh updates. We will see correct english text Instead of error messages.

Begetan wrote:Hello!

I'am working on translation new OpenCart into russian. It's not so hard due to OpenCart's clear MVC design

But there is another problem with quite fast development of new versions. Every day а lot of small pieces of code may change, so tranlators has only two options: folow every changes in svn, or wait long time between releases.

I suggest a great idea to improve localization support in OC.
I named it "Language fallback = on".

Here is small description.

For every language teplate we do
1. Load fallback language at first ( i.e. english text from language/english tpl, or language_id==1 from SQL queries)
2. Fill neded PHP Arrays in fallback strings
3. Load current language
4. Override all PHP Arrays with actual strings

In fallback mode we may start our shop with only 10% complete tranllation. Also possible run multilanguage shop with full fresh updates. We will see correct english text Instead of error messages.

Language fallback has been around since OpenCart 0.x
It was added to the core by me in 0.7.9
It was removed by daniel in 1.x through 1.3.x
Added back into the core by me in 1.4.7 through 1.4.9.x
Removed again by daniel in 1.5.0

Daniel needs to be convinced.

More discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=35311&view=unread#unread

It sounds like a real code war

Just realized why not having the language fallback is such a negative thing: any user who installs a module also needs to copy the new English language files to their other languages. Although I don't usually use multiple languages, I can imagine this would be pretty annoying for a user with multiple languages to have to do *every* time they purchase an extension. (Plus, it creates more work for us developers to have to field questions about not having the correct language files.)

Johnathan wrote:Just realized why not having the language fallback is such a negative thing: any user who installs a module also needs to copy the new English language files to their other languages. Although I don't usually use multiple languages, I can imagine this would be pretty annoying for a user with multiple languages to have to do *every* time they purchase an extension. (Plus, it creates more work for us developers to have to field questions about not having the correct language files.)

LOL you just realized this now?
Yes this is the main reason for the need for a fallback.

Qphoria wrote:LOL you just realized this now?
Yes this is the main reason for the need for a fallback.

Yeah, I was a bit slow on the uptake on this one. I had read the complaints about it, but since I rarely use multiple languages I never really thought about it in the context of installing new extensions.

Anyway, in the meantime, for those that want the language fallback in 1.5.x. Just use the system/library/language.php file from 1.4.9.x. I've attached the one from v1.4.9.6
Confirmed working with versions up to 1.5.1.3