[I18n-sig] When Internationalizing ?

[Werner F. Bruhin]

Hi Philippe,

I find it is easier to start doing it from the beginning.

Define all strings to be translated with gettext (i.e. _('string to 
translate in your base lang, for me in English')

Do some tests that all these strings size dynamiclly, e.g. a French 
string is often longer then an English one.  I develope with wxPython 
and had to play around a bit with sizers to get my screen layouts to 
adapt to the language.

Depending how far you go with I18n you should also do all the date 
handling in a way that you can easily switch from day/month/year to 
month/day/year and all other possible date formats.

If you also do currency stuff you have to decide again how far you want 
to go, e.g. I decided only to support 2 decimal currencies and currently 
only support "." as decimial separator and "," as thousand separator 
(until some customer complains).

Doing the actual translation can wait until late in the development 
cycle, also don't wait too long because you might have forgotten some 
strings.

Hope this helps
Werner

philopensource at hotmail.com wrote:
> Hi list,
> I was just wondering if i have to internazionalize the application at its start or when it is finish.
> What is the right order to do it?
> Thanks a lot,
> Philippe Collet