When building a T121470: Central Global Repository for Templates, Lua modules, and Gadgets, a framework for translating them all will be needed. Without such a framework, the repository will be severely underpowered.
There are some differences between localizing templates, modules, and gadgets, but there are probably some common things as well. This task is the parent task for these common things, and the unique issues will be discussed in other tasks.
Some possible common things:
- They all should be translatable in a manner that is as similar to MediaWiki core and extensions as possible. This probably means the Translate extension, although it may need some modifications.
- For the messages (user interface strings) they all should use a message syntax that is the same as in MediaWiki itself.
- It would be nice if the source language would be more flexible than it is in MediaWiki and extensions, and not assumed to be English. A lot of templates, modules, and gadgets that will be useful in many wikis are born in other languages, and making it as comfortable as possible to translate them directly from any language is important.
- There may be more.
Some extra reading material:
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Draft_spec/TLDR
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Draft_spec . Especially:
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gadgets/Gadgets_2.0
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gadgets/Roadmap#Gadgets_3.0
- Add more relevant links.
(The initial version of the task adds some people who appeared on T121470 as subscribers. Please remove yourself and accept my apologies if it doesn't actually interest you. --Amir)