On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Paul Houle <p...@ontology2.com> wrote: > I18N is essential if you need to cover multiple linguistic zones. > If you don't, I18N can increase the cost of making simple changes by a > factor of 3 to 5.
Not for us, in my experience. The developers just write the stuff purely in English and then volunteers handle localization. The cost might technically be much higher, but it's mostly handled by volunteers, so it doesn't actually hurt much of anything. The only difference for developers is we have to put messages in their own file and refer to them with message functions, but it's not a noticeable cost once you get used to it. Also I guess we have to spend some time designing and optimizing the localization system, but that's only a small part of development, not a really big cost. In any event, MediaWiki being localizable is entirely non-negotiable at this point, so if there's a cost, we're going to pay it anyway. What sort of cost are you talking about here, though? I can't think what sort of i18n system would require simple UI changes to take three to five times the work. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
