Post in Multi-Lingual Support

Jun 18 01:04 UTC

At OnlineGroups.Net, we are aware that to achieve widespread
installation, GroupServer will have to support languages other than
English. Multi-lingual support is currently scheduled for GroupServer
1.2: Affogato to Start the Day, on the GroupServer development roadmap.
   http://groupserver.org/groupserver/roadmap/

GroupServer currently supports UTF-8 in posts and page content, which
allows many character sets to be used. Here are some examples.
   http://demosite.onlinegroups.net/r/post/5PbAYyLUFGGbG8SFELIkZb

GroupServer also currently provides the infrastructure for multi-lingual
versions of static page content and forms in the interface. Thanks to
the rebuilds of the page and form-rendering systems that we have
completed, progress towards a multi-lingual interface no longer involves
_undoing_ anything (a matter for celebration at our end). It will
however require significant (but worthwhile) work, to build onto this
infrastructure.

The main steps required to complete the multi-language support are as
follows.

1: Implement language-selection for page content and UI forms.

2: Translate UI forms.

3: Maintain translations of UI forms.

Item 3 is potentially the most painful. For this reason, we would like
to achieve as much stability as possible in the _english_ versions of
the forms, something we aim to achieve in GroupServer 1.0: Gelato while
Viewing the Sights.

I should note that multi-lingual support is just one part of the
internationalization (or "internationalisation") process. The timezone
support that GroupServer already provides rather well, is another
obvious example.