Language Selector

[Xarcell]

I think  a language selector would go nice with that theme selector.

Just an idea.

-Xarcell

[Nokonium]

I've just been talking to a co-admin about something like this for one of his other projects. SMF displays in its default language and you can only change the language after you have registered. A language selector either as part of a theme or as a block would greatly help guests to read the content.

[agridoc]

Many wishes for a Happy New Year.

I have rather good news.

The answer is NO it is not necessary to be registered to change the language.

Whether registered or not one can give the command .../index.php?language=(lanquage) where (lanquage) is english, german, french, greek etc.

A working example can be seen in http://www.aeromodelling.gr/index_e.html, it has the commands to see the forum in the desired language. In the forum' s main page you can click on the flags to choose the language. I have not TP in my working site but it also works on my test TP in my PC.

As my forum's default language is greek it would be almost impossible for a non Greek to navigate and participate in the international section forum. This problem is overcomed with the language selector by clicking in the flag.

It' s very easy to make a language selector even with an HTML block, it' s open to any menu idea.

Also a link for a message or topic can be given to a friend so it will set the forum in the desired language, if installed of courseÂÃ,  :laugh:. Try this
http://www.aeromodelling.gr/ForumS/index.php?topic=415.0&language=english
(The forum' s default language is Greek).

Of course this command doesn' t translate the message contents.

[bloc]

This is good news. Is this on SMF 1.1 and/or also on 1.0.5?

[agridoc]

Yes Bloc it works in all versions I know, in fact my working forum is in 1.03, my test TP .75  forum is in 1.1 RC1 and I have tried it in other forums in various versions, it works in the same way as ?theme=x

I have searched and worked a bit with multilingual forums, I use a Greek codepage in all language translations for Greek to display correctly and a script modification by [Unknown] after a request by Spiros, official Greek SMF translator.
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=19572.msg160840#msg160840
for foreign characters to display correctly.

It seems to work OK. Test link (with English menu)
http://www.aeromodelling.gr/ForumS/index.php?language=english&topic=44.msg2540#msg2540
It is a test board and you can freely add a reply and test multilingual without registering.

I just discovered that the language option must be added BEFORE the topic and message number to go to a specific message. If used AFTER the link makes you go to the first message in the page.

[bloc]

Yes..the # in the link needs to be last thing in the query.

Amazing. I think I actually could use that on this site too. We have a lot of different speaking members here, so extra languages would be nice and show off SMF+TP even more.

[Nokonium]

Thanks, I've passed the thread url to my co-admin 

[agridoc]

I am trying to find a not so difficult way for multingual selection. Different templates is a solution but it needs quite some work, of course it will be a major improvement.

I was working with Bloc's themes for adding Greek translation, when necessary, except the buttons then an idea came to my mind for a more simple solution.

With the new TP version we have quite a few new options and permissions for blocks.

Is it very difficult to add a new block permission for languages?  One selection for all languages as default and a pull-down menu that will permit the administrator to choose in what selected languages to appear or maybe something like the group selector.

The installed languages can be retrieved from SMF.

If this is achived with a very simple HTML or PHP language selector block with flags and text like

Code Select Expand

<a href="index.php?language=english"><img alt="English" title="English" src="../uk.gif" border="0" height="y" width="x">
one can change Tiny Portal to multilingual.

Menus have to be written by the administrators but this is not a very difficult task. Different menublocks might be added in future releases.

A considerable effort is made by the SMF team for the first stable release of 1.1 to have increased multilingual capabilities so TP too should be prepared to match.