UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback In an ideal world, here's how the Languages function would work...

Instead of having to dig everything up in language files while browsing the forums (which is a time-consuming process because you really need to be able to see the text on a live board when doing a proper translation), there would be some sort of 'debug' mode for admins which would load up the board as usual, but every text on the board that is listed in the language files could be changed on the spot in some way: either a pop-up when clicking on the texts, or a small box next to each text that could be altered.

It would be really nice to be able to change stuff in such a 'debug-type' mode on-the-fly, while browsing the board. At the moment it's basically a case of browsing the board and having the CP opened up in another window and searching for the strings as you go along. Sometimes everything is neatly listed in a single file, at other times you have to dig through more than one file to change everything on a given page. Sometimes the same phrase is listed several times in various files and you have to check the url's to make sure you're not editing the wrong one by mistake.

Overall it would be great to be able to customize all strings by having them available for editing in some sort of special viewing mode that could be toggled for admins.

Just my two cents on what would be the ideal way to customize/translate a message board. Can't think of anything easier or more comfortable than that...

eve does that.

Wow, great news! <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Glad that someone else thought of this before me and on top of that implemented it too!

Hope the "trickle-down effect" will take place here and that we'll see customer-hosted forums employ this feature in due course.

Dave, any chance this will find its way into the new Infopop board that will combine Classic and Threads into a single product?

Well, the way Eve does it is to cheat and use images, last I checked. <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

The new product takes the Threads approach to Wordlets - one file per action.

Any duplicated wording is on purpose. We've found that reusing one string for multiple purposes, when the string isn't long and explicit, can lead to issues. For example, the word "From" in English can be used in a handful of contexts. We reused the same Wordlet in Classic for a "From" field in private messages, and "From" as in the user's location. This ended up causing a problem because other languages use different words for those different purposes.

We do realize that translation is a pain... if you have other recommendations, please do give them to us, as we'd love to make your lives easier. <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I have one suggestion. With the way language files currently work all strings have to be available in the file - even if that means english strings have to be added to translated files. This leads to pollution of the language packs, and makes a translation harder, especially if you're a few versions behind. The english strings outdate faster then you would expect at first, and removing them from an old translation is a &%$&* job <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> (Of course the same goes for translated strings, but that's a different story.)

It shouldn't be too hard to use the english string from the english files if that string wasn't available in the translated file, or if an entire file is missing, is it? This wouldn't matter at all for completely new translations, and make an update of an old translation only little harder. It would involve adding the newest english strings (or entire files) to an existing translation to prepare it for an update. And as you know I made a script that does exactly that.

Does this suggestion make sense?
Tjerk.

Yes, it makes perfect sense. The new templates actaually work like that - if the user makes a change to the template, a copy of the template is created, and that copy is used.

The same idea could be applied to Wordlets - translated strings get their own external storage, which isn't dependant on the stock versions. That also solves the upgrade issue, as overwriting the stock files wouldn't clobber translated versions.