Introduction

  LinguaPlone aims to be *the* multilingual/translation solution for
  Plone, and achieves this by being as transparent as possible and by
  minimizing the impact for existing applications and Plone itself.

  It utilizes Archetypes references to do the translation, and all content
  is left intact both on install and uninstall - thus, it will not disrupt
  your content structure in any way. It also works with WebDAV and FTP.

  LinguaPlone doesn't require a particular hierarchy of content, and will
  work with any layout of your content space.

Some benefits of LinguaPlone

  - Totally transparent, install-and-go.

  - Each translation is a discrete object, and can be workflowed
    individually.

  - This also means that it works with WebDAV and FTP.

  - Translations are kept track of using AT references.

  - You can multilingual-enable your types without affecting their operation
    outside LinguaPlone.

  - Even if you uninstall LinguaPlone after adding multilingual content, all
    your content will be intact and will work as separate objects! The only
    thing that will be inactive is the references between the objects. If you
    re-install it, they will be back. It's very non-intrusive.

  - Supporting multilingual capabilities is a 4 (!) line addition to your
    Archetypes class, and does not alter the functionality of the class when
    used outside LinguaPlone.

  - Fully integrated with ATContentTypes, so the basic content types are
    translatable.

  - Supports language-independent fields (example: dates, first/last names)
    for fields you want to be the same across translations, and updated in all
    languages if one of them changes.

  - Uses the notion of Canonical versions, so you can do interesting things
    with workflow, like invalidate all translations of a document when the
    master copy has changed.


Dependencies

  Requires the following minimum versions:

  - Plone 2.1

  - Archetypes 1.3.4

  - PloneLanguageTool 1.3.x

  - Recommended: PlacelessTranslationService 1.2

  Note: Plone 2.0 is also supported, althought not recommended. Make sure to
  read the additional info at README-Plone-2.0.txt file.

LinguaPlone - quick demo instructions

  LinguaPlone ships with a few example types that demonstrates the translation
  mechanism. It's trivial to add this to your own classes (see the README),
  but to save you the hassle, you can try this simple experiment:

  - Make sure you have Plone 2.1.1 or newer installed. If you're
    trying to use LinguaPlone on 2.0, you'll need to upgrade Archetypes and
    add a few other packages, as noted under Dependencies.

  - Put LinguaPlone and PloneLanguageTool in your Products directory

  - (Re)start Zope

  - 'Site Setup' &rarr; 'Add/Remove Products', install LinguaPlone and
    PloneLanguageTool

  For the demonstration to make sense, we need to define a list of languages:

  - Go to the Site Setup

  - Click 'Language Settings'

  - Select 3-4 languages from the selection list. Note that the languages are
    listed in their native name, so the sorting might be a bit unexpected
    (Spanish is Español, for example)

  - Press 'Save'

  Now we have a few languages to play with, and can go back to the Plone
  interface. Notice how you now have flags indicating your selected languages
  under the print/sendto area.

  We now want to add a simple type:

  - Add a 'Page'. If you are using Plone 2.0, you'll need ATContentTypes or
    another AT- and LP-enabled type to make LinguaPlone work. Again, we really
    recommend Plone 2.1 or newer. ;)

  - After filling out the type with some content and clicking 'Save', you will
    see that this content type has a pulldown menu, 'Translate into'.

  - Select a language you want to translate this document into.

  - Save this translation.

  - Try to switch languages by clicking the flags.

  That's a very simple use case for the multilingual types.

Developer Usage

  You can test it by multilingual-enabling your existing AT content types
  (see instructions below),  or by testing the simple included types.
  Don't forget to select what languages should be available in
  'portal_languages' in the ZMI. :)

Credits

  LinguaPlone was donated to the Plone Foundation by Plone Solutions,
  March 2006.

  Design and development --
    "Plone Solutions":http://www.plonesolutions.com
    (Alexander Limi, Dorneles Treméa, Geir Bækholt, Helge Tesdal, Stefan H. Holek)

  Original design idea --
    "Objectrealms":http://www.objectrealms.net
    (Benjamin Saller, Kapil Thangavelu)

  Funding and deployment, initial version --
    Oxfam International

  Additional funding/sponsorship --
    Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Centre for New European studies
    (Jonathan Lewis)

  Funding Plone 2.0.x compatibility --
    Zope Japan Corporation
    (Takeshi Yamamoto)

  Also many thanks to

    Simon Eisenmann
    -- For doing the hard job of the first implementations (I18NLayer)
       we had to learn from before doing this.

    Learning Lab Denmark
    -- For contributing and sponsoring the experience needed to build a
       multilingual solution.

    Nate Aune
    -- For always pushing for the better solution and making us realise
       LinguaPlone had to be built.

    Jodok Batlogg
    -- For extensive testing, deploying and feedback.

    Sasha Vincic
    -- For testing and expanding and making cool new stuff happen with
       LinguaPlone, XLIFF import/export in particular.


Implementation details

  Architecture

    LinguaPlone can only be used with Archetypes based content types.
    It provides a I18NBaseObject class that implements a ITranslatable interface
    that handles the translation linking. LinguaPlone provides base classes that
    inherits from I18NBaseObject and the regular AT base classes.

  Language independent fields

    Language independent fields are looked up from the canonical (original)
    translation.

    The value is also stored on each translated object so every object has every
    attribute in case it is moved out of a translation context or some attributes
    (like start and end on Events) are referenced directly.

    Language independence is set in the AT schema definition. Only AT based
    content types can have language independent fields.

  Language lookup

    The language tool returns a list of languages to look for. If there is no
    fallback, there will be only one element in the list.

  Enable multilingual support in your content types

    At the top, **instead** of 'from Products.Archetypes.public import *', you
    add::

      try:
          from Products.LinguaPlone.public import *
      except ImportError:
          # No multilingual support
          from Products.Archetypes.public import *

    For the fields that are language independent, you add
    'languageIndependent=1' in the schema definition.

Known issues

  No known issues

License

  GNU GPL, see LICENSE.txt
