[Ocaml-i18n] proposal: message catalogue system

[Richard Jones]

On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 11:52:18AM +0000, Benjamin Geer wrote:
> Richard Jones wrote:
> > Conversely, I also worked on a Java project where they had rolled
> > their own translation system using keys into an external XML
> > file. That was a really bad approach, because the application kept
> > crashing every time a translation was missing.
> 
> That shows that their system was poorly implemented, but not that it was 
> a bad approach.  There's no reason for a key-based system to crash 
> because of missing translations.

Well indeed. In fact the whole system was more badly designed and
poorly implemented than I think you can possibly imagine.  (Red Hat's
CCM nee Ars Digita ACS Java, in case you're wondering what I was
working on).

The fact remains, however, that it's very hard for a key-based system
to do the right thing when a translation is missing. The best thing it
can do is display the key. Hopefully the key will be something
meaningful to the end user, such as THIS_IS_THE_ENGLISH_MESSAGE.

Ah, but now you might as well make the key *be* the English message!
Looks like we've actually arrived at the gettext approach after all :-)

Rich.

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