[pmwiki-users] multilanguage redesign (was: PageNotFound translation)

[sgp]

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> The biggest issue with something like "case" or "lang" is knowing how 
> they might interact with (:if:).  Mixing (:if:), (:case:), and (:lang:)
> in a page is likely to cause a lot of confusion and frustration for
> authors and admins.  So perhaps we'd be best served by sticking to 
> an if/elseif/else/ifend form, at least in the beginning.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 

Most of my pages mix language with tables and links, so they're always fairly complex.
It's like writing several conditional pages into one. There are two ways to do it:

(:if lang A:)
complete page for lang A
(:if lang B:)
complete page for lang B
...
(:if:)

and

(:if lang A:)
section 1 for lang A
(:if lang B:)
section 1 for lang B
...
(:if lang A:)
section 2 for lang A
(:if lang B:)
section 2 for lang B
...
(:if:)

I use the second form when a page contains something more than simple text, like tables, conditional 
formatting, etc. The second form is easier to maintain in that case, although you have to write more.
I often wish I had a way to select from an inline dictionary, something like (made-up syntax):

[hello|hola|hallo][en|es|de]{$userlang}

meaning, use 'hello' when userlang==en, 'hola' when userlang==es, 'hallo' when userlang==de
this would come very handy when translating i.e., link text [http://| linktext] in a concise form