From: Hannes Papenberg <hackwar06@googlemail.com>
To: JM Simonet <infografjms@gmail.com>
CC: Christophe Demko <chdemko@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Language Switcher Feature
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Every code that we add to the stable release of Joomla has long term
effects on Joomla development, since it is either code that we are going
build upon in the future or it is going to become legacy code that we
have to find a way to code around when we go a completely different way.
A tutorial and/or a blog post are nice and fine, but they are not really
what I would expect. As I wrote already half a year ago (and I repeated
that on an almost monthly basis ever since) I expected an RFC to be
written for this feature, which then would have been commented on and
based on that RFC we could have implemented the feature. I've been
asking around and so far no one could explain to me what this feature is
supposed to do and how it should do this. And among others, I asked
Andrew. He was also the one that told me, that his work on cleaning up
the language switcher branch kept him from working on the comments branch.

I've tried to understand the feature, I asked the questions, they were
not answered up to now and at this moment it seems to me as if we are
adding a feature that no one knows how it should work, that costs us
performance, that will create problems with legacy code in the long run
and that is only for a minority of websites important out there. (Yes, I
think that less than 10% of the websites out there need multi lingual
content on their site and those will still need to use stuff like the
Joomfish) That you are not interested in explaining this to me and
trying to convince me that this feature is usefull, convinces me on the
other hand, that my concerns are valid. And no matter how much pressure
you put on the other leadership people and no matter how much you
badmouth me towards them, will change my opinion. The only thing that
you are achieving is, that I stop my work on Joomla and this project
looses yet another developer. I've been trying to give you another
chance to explain this to me and win me over to support this feature.
Instead you are answering me in a hostily manner.

I'm going to happily sit by the line and watch how the community is
taking this apart.

Hannes Papenberg

Am 18.05.2010 07:11, schrieb JM Simonet:
> Hello Hannes,
>
> We are going to write a Tutorial on the usage of lang switcher.
> Then we will make a blog about it.
> It has no effect on J! dev in the long run.
> And the comments branch not being committed has nothing to do with
> langswitcher. Period.
>
> Regards
> JM
>
>> Hi Jean-Marie,
>> hi Christophe,
>> already a few months ago, I asked for a concept for the language
>> switcher feature and I asked a few questions that I think are crucial to
>> the implementation. I still don't understand what that feature is
>> supposed to do, how it is supposed to be implemented and how it is going
>> to affect Joomla development in the long run. I just see at this moment,
>> that because of the language switcher branch we don't have comments in
>> the trunk and that we have a negative impact on the performance.
>>
>> Please explain to me, what that feature is supposed to do, how it is
>> implemented and answer the questions that I posted that month ago.
>>
>> Here are the questions again (a bit pulled out of context, but anyway):
>> - Why should the filter redirect you to the homepage - each time?
>> - What do you do if the homepage isn't the featured view of com_content?
>> - What if it is a component that does not support multi-lingual content?
>> - Is the language switch represented in the URL and if so, how is it
>> done?
>> - How is the switcher realised? With a module?
>> - How do you decide if that module is supposed to show up when you are
>> on a subpage where you either can't select a different language, because
>> you are in an article or where you don't know if there are content items
>> in this category or in its children with mixed language?
>> - How do you get back to the "original" language?
>> - If you are switching both content and modules, how should Joomla work
>> if you didn't select a language? Should it show all 10 modules that I
>> have on the page, times the number of languages that I have installed?
>>
>> Hannes