RE : switching between multiple languages in XSL

Jason Viers wrote:

  Hi

> We're transforming a XML file to HTML via XSL, and we'd
> like the XSL to be usable across multiple languages.  The
> XML file being transformed does _not_ have the text we'd
> like to select between, just an indication as to what
> language should be used.  There are things like static

  If I understand right your problem, you can use external
XML files, dictionnaries, containing the actual translated
sentences.  You'll access them via document(), for example
document(concat('i18n/dico-', $i18n-lang, '.xml')) where
$i18n-lang is the language name, for example 'EN', selected
in your input document, and the 'i18n' directory having a
file named 'dico-<lang>.xml', a dictionnary, for each
supported languages.

  Depending on your problem, the dictionnaries can be a flat
set of named entries, or a highly structured XML document
organizing the entries.  From my little experience, I
recommend a flat dictionnary, where structure can instead be
introduced in the entry names.  But it depends on a lot of
things we don't know here IMHO.

  So to be a little more concrete:

    <!-- in your XSLT script -->
    <xsl:variable name="i18n-lang" select="../in/your/input"/>
    <xsl:variable name="i18n-dico"
                  select="document('use concat & $i18n-lang')"/>
    <!-- use a named template in XSLT 1.0 -->
    <xsl:function name="my:i18n-entry">
      <xsl:param name="name"/>
      <!-- return an entry or a string, depends on the
           structure of your dictionnaries -->
    </xsl:function>

    <!-- in each dico -->
    <dico lang="EN">
      <entry name="an.entry">The actual text.</entry>
      <entry name="other.entry">Other text.</entry>
      ...
    </dico>

  But a common problem with I18N is the placement in
variable text, as dates and other numbers extracted from
your input tree for example.  So you'll need a way to
parametrize the entries.  You can put named place holders in
the entries, with empty elements:

    <entry name="footer.last.modified">This page was last
      modified on <date/>.</entry>

and in XSLT:

    <!-- i18n-entry uses my:i18n-entry() to get the entry,
         and replaces the place holders, matched by name -->

    <xsl:call-template name="i18n-entry">
      <xsl:with-param name="name"
                      select="'footer.last.modified'"/>
      <xsl:with-param name="params">
        <param name="date" value="{XPath for date}"/>
      </xsl:with-param>
    </xsl:call-template>

  These are basic ideas I use each day in my work.  All that
depends on your specific needs.  I think I already post a
message on XSL List describing all that.  You can search the
archives.

  Regards,

--drkm


































	

	
		
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