Internationalisation and my PHP Development Infrastructure

By Tony Marston
2005-07-17

Introduction

The term "internationalisation" is sometimes referred to as "globalisation" or "localisation", but what does it actually mean? The following description is taken from java.sun.com:

Internationalization is the process of designing an application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Sometimes the term internationalization is abbreviated as i18n, because there are 18 letters between the first "i" and the last "n."
An internationalized program has the following characteristics:
With the addition of localization data, the same executable can run worldwide.
Textual elements, such as status messages and the GUI component labels, are not hard coded in the program. Instead they are stored outside the source code and retrieved dynamically.
Support for new languages does not require recompilation.
Culturally-dependent data, such as dates and currencies, appear in formats that conform to the end user's region and language.
It can be localized quickly.

The process of internationalisation can be as simple as replacing a string of text in one language with a string of text in another language, or it can be much more complicated involving the use of different character sets, as explained in Notes on Internationalization. In the interests of simplicity I shall limit myself to the straightforward replacement of text as this is "good enough" in most circumstances I shall encounter. As for different character sets, I have found that by changing default_charset in my php.ini file from 'iso-8859-1' to 'UTF-8', and also setting 'content-type:text/html; charset=UTF-8' for my HTML output, I can cover the most common eventualities.

Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction
» Possible Methods
» Design Decisions
» My Implementation - Directory Structure
» My Implementation - File Names
» My Implementation - Determine User Language
» My Implementation - Locate Language Subdirectory
» My Implementation - Load Screen Structure file
» My Implementation - Get Language Text
» My Implementation - Get Language Array
» My Implementation - Handling Dates
» My Implementation - Handling Numbers
» Conclusion
» References

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