I've been working on a plugin called "po", that adds support for multi-lingual wikis,
translated with gettext, using [po4a](http://po4a.alioth.debian.org/).

More information:

* It can be found in [my "po" branch](http://repo.or.cz/w/ikiwiki/intrigeri.git?a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/po): `git clone git://repo.or.cz/ikiwiki/intrigeri.git`
* It involves adding three hooks to ikiwiki core.
* It is documented (including TODO and plans for next work steps) in `doc/plugins/po.mdwn`, which can be found in the same branch.
* No public demo site is available so far, I'm working on this.

My plan is to get this plugin clean enough to be included in ikiwiki.

The current version is a proof-of-concept, mature enough for me to dare submitting it here,
but I'm prepared to hear various helpful remarks, and to rewrite parts of it as needed.

Any thoughts on this?

> Well, I think it's pretty stunning what you've done here. Seems very
> complete and well thought out. I have not read the code in great detail
> yet.
> 
> Just using po files is an approach I've never seen tried with a wiki. I
> suspect it will work better for some wikis than others. For wikis that
> just want translations that match the master language as closely as
> possible and don't wander off and diverge, it seems perfect. (But what happens
> if someone edits the Discussion page of a translated page?)
> 
> Please keep me posted, when you get closer to having all issues solved
> and ready for merging I can do a review and hopefully help with the
> security items you listed. --[[Joey]]

>> Thanks a lot for your quick review, it's reassuring to hear such nice words
>> from you. I did not want to design and write a full translation system, when
>> tools such as gettext/po4a already have all the needed functionality, for cases
>> where the master/slave languages paradigm fits.
>> Integrating these tools into ikiwiki plugin system was a pleasure.
>>
>> I'll tell you when I'm ready for merging, but in the meantime,
>> I'd like you to review the changes I did to the core (3 added hooks).
>> Can you please do this? If not, I'll go on and hope I'm not going to far in
>> the wrong direction.
>>
>>> Sure.. I'm not completly happy with any of the hooks since they're very
>>> special purpose, and also since `run_hooks` is not the best interface
>>> for a hook that modifies a variable, where only the last hook run will
>>> actually do anything. It might be better to just wrap
>>> `targetpage`, `bestlink`, and `beautify_urlpath`. But, I noticed
>>> the other day that such wrappers around exported functions are only visible by
>>> plugins loaded after the plugin that defines them.
>>> 
>>> Update: Take a look at the new "Function overriding" section of
>>> [[plugins/write]]. I think you can just inject wrappers about a few ikiwiki
>>> functions, rather than adding hooks. The `inject` function is pretty
>>> insane^Wlow level, but seems to work great. --[[Joey]]
>>>
>>>> Thanks a lot, it seems to be a nice interface for what I was trying to achieve.
>>>> I may be forced to wait two long weeks before I have a chance to confirm
>>>> this. Stay tuned. --[[intrigeri]]
>>>>
>>>>> I've updated the plugin to use `inject`. It is now fully self-contained,
>>>>> and does not modify the core anymore. --[[intrigeri]]
>>
>> The Discussion pages issue is something I am not sure about yet. But I will
>> probably decide that "slave" pages, being only translations, don't deserve
>> a discussion page: the discussion should happen in the language in which the
>> pages are written for real, which is the "master" one. --[[intrigeri]]
>> 
>> I think that's a good decision, you don't want to translate discussion,
>> and if the discussion page turns out multilingual, well, se la vi. ;-)
>> 
>> Relatedly, what happens if a translated page has a broken link, and you
>> click on it to edit it? Seems you'd first have to create a master page
>> and could only then translate it, right? I wonder if this will be clear
>> though to the user.
>>
>> And also, is there any way to start a translation of a page into a new
>> lanauge using the web interface?
>> 
>> FWIW, I'm tracking your po branch in ikiwiki master git in the po
>> branch. One thing I'd like to try in there is setting up a translated
>> basewiki, which seems like it should be pretty easy to do, and would be
>> a great demo! --[[Joey]]