Of its own interface, yes, that would be a nightmare.
The issue with LanguageXX.php is this: two ways to translate the
interface exist (in practice). With one, translations are activated on
that Wikipedia as soon as they are submitted (Mediawiki namespace).
With the other, a developer has to be asked to activate it,
adjustments are more difficult to make, and activation is entirely at
the developer's leisure.
Many more recent translations have been exclusively namespace because
people didn't forsee the problems that might be caused by not using
LanguageXX.php.
It's fairly simple to export the MediaWiki namespace translations into
a LanguageXX.php file, and a bot could probably be made for it, but
even then it would probably be a while before anybody activated them.
(I can't do that because my programming skills are limited to qbasic,
html, and unl)
Mark
On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 17:55:08 +0000, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 18:43:29 -0700, Mark Williamson
<node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Nope, you can choose an interface language now.
Unfortunately for many Wikipedias, this uses the LanguageXX.php file
and NOT whatever might be in the mediawiki namespace on that Wikipedia
- thus you can't view the interface in Kannada, or Navajo, or etc...
For obvious reasons, it would be a bit of a nightmare if every wiki
could include a seperate customised version of its interface in every
language; and the different wikipedias will customise things in ways
dependent on their *community*, not just the language.
Presumably (I hope I'm not reopening a can of worms here) the
languages you mention can become available to whoever wants them as
soon as somebody creates an appropriate LanguageXX.php, so it's not so
much a problem of how the interface selection works, as the status of
those translations.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]