[Mediawiki-l] Multilingual Content (was: (Media)Wiki use by SoCprojects)

Fri May 26 12:51:55 UTC 2006

Multi-lingual wiki is a right pain in the ****.  Setting up a single 
language wiki is ease itself (well done folks).  Setting up a multi-lingual 
wiki is a nightmare (maybe if Jimbo and others worked in a multiligual 
enviroment like Belgium life would be different).

For example:
* for every language you have to set up a new database (even if it is part 
of the same single database, I still have to go through the setup)
* I have to have a separate copy of the MediaWiki code for every language or 
figure out the wizardry to use a single version with different LocalSettings 
per language
* I have to figure out how I'm going to sort out the problem of multiple 
signons (each language will have separate signons - that is just so NOT what 
you want when you just want a site in 2 languages (say).

I am in Belgium where every site is always in French and Dutch and I am 
gradually figuring out each of the gotchas for my site www.treekee.com.

Next I want to figure out how to do it simply for a truly multinational site 
(70+ languages).

It should ideally be as easy as saying, in LocalSettings.php, this is the 
list of languages I want supported:
    $langsSupported = array("en", "fr", "de", "pl", "zh");
    $defaultLang = "en";

It's not. It's just a nightmare.

"Andre-John Mas" 
<Andre-John.Mas at simplernetworks.com> wrote in 
message 
news:23BEE0D8F55D0747A13EFE0A6937FFA1BF6792 at simnet.simplernetworks.com...
> Just curious, what do you see as the type of issues that exist with 
> regards
> to accepting multilingual content?
>
> Andre