Translation/design/design.txt

eZ publish Enterprise Component: Translation, Design
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:Author:   Derick Rethans
:Revision: $Revision: $
:Date:     $Date: $

Translation
===========

Purpose
-------
The localized strings are read not by the
Translation class itself, but by backends that know how to deal with different
formats for storing translations.

Design Description
==================
The TranslationManager class receives in it's ctor a backend object that
implements the TranslationBackendInterface to be used to read the localized
data from.  After the TranslatorManager is instanciated, you can use a method
to attach a filter. Filters can be used to modify the translated string. An
example might be the "bork" filter to show which phrases are translatable, but
not yet translated.

For each location and locale combination you use a method, which returns to you
a Translation object, which you can use to translate strings.  During one
request, the TranslationManager keeps a 'reference' to the returned Translation
object, so they are not created multiple times uncessarily during each request
and this also saves loading/parsing time as each Translation object internally
has the localized array.  When a Translator gets instanciated it receives the
data from the TranslationManager through the backend after a possible existing
TranslationFilters has been applied to it. Filters are applied in the order
they are added to the TranslationManager.

Backends
--------
A backend class implements the TranslationBackendInterface, which defines
method for: setting the backend's configuration through an associative array;
reading a context and returning this as an array where the key is the
translation's key (usually the english text) and the value is the localized
string. It is up to the backend to implement caching. For example the
TranslationTsBackend class might offer an additional method to set the Caching
Object to be used for caching.

Filters
-------
Each filter implements the TranslationFilter interface. A translation filter is
initialized when they are attached to the TranslationManager. They can define
two methods. The first one will be called when they are attached to the
TranslationManager. This second method receives (by reference) the data that
comes out of the backend (for each context) and can then modify this data to
change the localized string.  The TranslationFilter should not modify the
original string and comment fields. One of the filters replaces the
"translated" text with the "original" text if the translation is marked as
"unfinished".

Algorithms
==========
a = new TranslationTsBackend (which implements TranslationBackendInterface).
a->setLocation('share/translation');

b = new TranslationManager(TranslationBackendInterface a);
b->addFilter("TranslationFilterFillin");
b->addFilter("TranslationFilterBork");

// Asks the backend for data, runs the attached filter, and creates a
// Translation object
tln1 = b->getContext("admin/login", "nl_NL"); 

// Returns the localized string belonging to key "key", the filter has already
// been applied to it. Possible parameters can be passed as associative array
// as optional second parameter. 
string = tln1->getString('key');


Translation Map
---------------
Some methods return a context, which is an array of ezcTranslationData objects
(structs).  The struct has the following elements:

'original', 'comment', 'translation' and 'status'. The 'comment' is a free text
field that provides some additional context for the localized string as
reminder for translators. 'translation' is the localized string and 'status' is
an integer containing one of the constants as defined in the ezcTranslationData
class.