[keycloak-dev] Evaluation of i18n/i10n tools

[Stan Silvert]

On 8/10/2015 1:55 PM, Bill Burke wrote:
> Our translation team is used to message bundles/property files.  Don't
> know if that is an issue or not.
We would use message bundles/property files if we did i18n/l10n on the 
server side with Java and Freemarker.  It's a possibility.

The default way Freemarker solves the problem is to have you create 
localized versions of each template.  So there would be lots of 
duplication and a maintenance nightmare.  According to [1], you would 
have login_en.ftl, login_fr.ftl, login_es.ftl, etc.   So you've just 
multiplied the number of template files by the number of languages 
supported.

Another approach using Freemarker would be to use Freemarker itself as a 
localization tool.  Then you only need a single template for all 
languages and you use Freemarker and Java to do the substitutions.  But 
it looks like this solution gets complicated very quickly[2][3].

That being said, I'm not very familiar with Freemarker.  If you guys 
think I should look into a server-side solution let me know and I'll 
give it a try.

[1] 
http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_include.html#ref_directive_include_localized
[2] http://sourceforge.net/p/freemarker/discussion/2346/thread/5a29eee0/
[3] http://mnmlst-dvlpr.blogspot.com/2012/06/know-your-library-i18n.html
>
> On 8/10/2015 1:45 PM, Stan Silvert wrote:
>> I've been evaluating tools to help us localize Keycloak.  The tools I
>> looked at were angular-translate, angular-localization, and
>> angular-gettext.  All use the MIT license.
>>
>> I took a static version of our login page and localized with
>> angular-translate.  Then I did the same thing using
>> angular-localization.  Both worked well and it was pretty cool to see
>> the language change between English and French with the click of a
>> button.  Both use ordinary JSON files for the translations.
>>
>> In doing this, I was able to explore the features, strengths, and
>> weaknesses of each library.  Of the two, I prefer angular-translate.
>> The reason mostly has to do with a greater feature set, maturity, and a
>> larger community.  I can go into much greater detail if anyone is
>> interested.
>>
>> For angular-gettext, it seems to be somewhat popular, but it takes a
>> very different approach.  I'm rejecting it based on the fact that it
>> relies a great deal on tools and automation.  I don't think that
>> translators and developers want to learn new tools and a new file format
>> for the translations (.po files vs. JSON).  Plus, angular-gettext
>> automatically uses the English version of the word or phrase to generate
>> keys in the .po files.  The whole process looks error-prone.
>>
>> If you have any experience using these or other packages please let me
>> know.  In researching this topic, I've found that some people even roll
>> their own angular translation tools.  So let me know if you have
>> experience with that as well.
>>
>> Stan
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