Supporting context descriptions about angular-translate

[DWand]

Two more thoughts. What about
a) comments
"key": "translation", // context
b) arrays
"key": ["translation", "context"],
as a variant

[0x-r4bbit]

@lichtner regarding this one: #13 (comment)

This would mean, everytime you have a namespace context and don't actually mean 'our' context you have to make a hash of it, which has a text key. Could look a bit weird right?

[knalli]

My concerns about this are

1 Required introducing of reserved keys

This example will not work any more if the feature would be introduced because the translation reader could not handle both

$translateProvider.translations({
  "dialog": {
    "title": "Form",
    "context": "Context",
    "text": "Please confirm..."
  }
});

  <div>
    <h2>{{'dialog.title' | translate}}} ({{'dialog.context' | translate}})</h2>
   <p>{{'dialog.text' | translate}}</p>
  </div>

2 What about recursions?

$translateProvider.translations({
  "dialog": {
    "title": "Form",
    "context": {
      "context" : {
        "text": "Text"
      }
    }
    "text": "Please confirm..."
  }
});

Allowed? What is expected? What should we do?

3 In combination to the given points, additional hints like comments will bloat them even more up. IMO :)

[0x-r4bbit]

@knalli Agree with you. @lichtner do you have already such a tool, which collects translation ids and show up descriptions in some way? Or do you plan to build one?

If there's already a tool, it'd be interesting what it actually expects to get descriptions out of translation tables (something beside gettext, something with UI 'n stuff like that, for the translator you know :) )

[lichtner]

@PascalPrecht @knalli sorry guys I misunderstand this example.

[0x-r4bbit]

We get some conflicts with a kinda reserved keyword like context which only makes sense in a object hash which has to be detected by angular-translate, since $translateProvider.translations() is also able to understand namespaces.

[0x-r4bbit]

@DWand In both, a) and b) you don't have any connection between translation-id <-> context <-> translation

[lichtner]

I am not sure if I will build new translation tool or if I build convert script from your format to some format which can I import to existing tools.

[0x-r4bbit]

@lichtner But no matter what, you need this context feature?

[DWand]

@PascalPrecht, ok. But what kind of the connection is needed?
If we have

$translateProvider.translations({
  "dialog": {
    "title": "Form",
    "context": "Context",
    "text": "Please confirm..."
  }
});

, is the given "contex" a context for "title", "text" of for a whole parent-object?

[lichtner]

Now I develop new ng-app. In my previous apps (non ng) I need it and I used it. May be I will need also, now I am not sure. IMHO it is common feature for translation tools so I can help you develop better tool.

[lichtner]

this was reason why I start this talk.

[lichtner]

@DWand may be comment will be enough if javascript have some annotation which I can get via some reflection. But I don't now it annotation exists in javascript, do you know? Or I can create some comments scanner.

[0x-r4bbit]

This is where it's getting tricky. This would just be resolved to:

dialog.title // 'Form'
dialog.context // 'Context'
dialog.text // 'Please confirm...'

Now, when actually wanna have context for a specific translation id you would do something like this:

.translations({
   'dialog': {
        'context': 'This is a description',
        text: 'This is the actual translation'
    }
});

So this:

  "dialog": {
    "title": "Form",
    "context": "Context",
    "text": "Please confirm..."
  }

Wouldn't work anymore, since we would check something like "if translation id is object and object.context is truthy, use object.text". In that case, dialog.title is just out of the race.

[0x-r4bbit]

@lichtner it just depends on what your tool would expect. If you wanna go with comments, do comments (with annotations). These comments will be ignored by angular-translate, but your tool has to know, how to handle'em. So in case of using comments for that, this is no longer a work of angular-translate.

[0x-r4bbit]

@lichtner Nevertheless, it'd be cool to say that angular-translate would work well with such a tool. So I'm open for solution ideas. :)

[lichtner]

If I do some experiments with some translation tool I will send you feedback.

[0x-r4bbit]

Do that! :)

[lichtner]

;)

[DWand]

@lichtner, I don't know. But it seems no. It's hardly true that js has such functionality.

It's hardly depends on a "tool" you all are talking about. If it is a desktop app you could write some kind of parser for comments. All you need is to provide a convention of placing those comments.

But, nevertheless, I think, if you, guys, really want to extend/improve this module qualitatively, you have firstly to look how this feature is implemented in another products which are greatly comfy to use. Maybe, it can help to find a right way.

[DWand]

And yes, just one more thought.
If this feature is only for the translator and is never showed to the user, why do you want to write this context to the translation tables? JS is not a PHP, Python, Ruby or so on. User has to download this translations on local machine. And any additional symbol in the translations reflects on the loading time.
At the same time, the translator works on the server side. And he works with sources of translations. So, how exactly this feature in the JS module can help the translator on his local machine?
Maybe, it's better to use a specific formats of a used tool to store translations on the dev machine and simply convert/compile the resulting translation to the needed format of the JS module? As for me, this approach is much better. It's very hard to adapt this module to all possible translation tools. And, even if it's possible, the module will looks like a monster instead of tiny comfy pretty useful thing.
Excuse me, please. Maybe, I'm wrong. Maybe, I don't get something. But my opinion is that JS module has to be independent from the tools you use to translate texts in the backend. It simply has to show user a correct text in correct language which is predefined before. Actually, this is not an IDE, isn't it?

[0x-r4bbit]

Closing this for now