I18N Translation Helper
=======================

Installation
============

As a plugin:
	script/plugin install git://github.com/kipcole9/rails-i18n-translation-inheritance-helper.git
	
Or from git directly as a plugin to your project:
	git submodule add git://github.com/kipcole9/rails-i18n-translation-inheritance-helper.git vendor/plugins/i18n_translation_helper
	
	
Description
===========

Adds a fallback chain to translation lookup in Rails i18n.
When installed (plugin, or otherwise mixed in) the method 'translate'
will now attempt to find a translation in a broader scope locale
or 'sister' locals if there are any.

This means that it is more practical to have regional variations of
locales where there are only minor differences.

This updated version defines a lookup_chain as follows:

1. lookup in supplied or default locale (ie. "en-UK")
2. then in the broader locale ("en")
3. then any 'sister' locales ('en-GB', 'en-US', 'en-AU', ...). 

NOTE
===
To lookup the 'sister' locales requires that the version of I18n 
installed supports the #available_locales call.

This call is supported in the I18n gem version: svenfuchs-i18n (0.1.2) or in sven's
github repository.  You can also add the required functions by adding the following
to an initializer in your rails project:

module I18n
  class << self
    def available_locales
      backend.available_locales
    end
  end

  module Backend
    class Simple
      def available_locales
        translations.keys
      end
    end
  end
end

Performance
===========

Note that for the simple cases of a skinny narrow scope locale (ie 'en-GB') where
most keys are stored in the broader locale (ie. 'en') then performance will be twice
as slow on average compared with the standard I18n#translate function.

More experimentation to come yet.....

How this fits in an application
===============================

For example, the only practical difference between en-US and en-UK
would be the currency symbol ($ or £).

By default, the full set of rails 'en' rails localisation files would need to be
copied and maintained.

With this approach, an 'en-UK' localisation file for rails just has to maintain
the differences from the 'en' version.

An example would be:

en-UK:
  support:
    number:
      # Used in number_to_currency()
      currency:
          unit: "£"

Any lookup in the 'en-UK' local that fails will be redirected to the 'en' locale
for translation.

This approach can also be used for regional language variations in other
languages as well (pt-PT vs. pt-BR; fr-FR vs. fr-CA; es-ES vs. es-MX) - for both application
localisation files and for rails' own localisations.

This would be better (and would execute faster) if implemented in the I18n
core module directly.

Example
=======

Using the en-UK localisation file above:

	I18n.locale = "en-UK"
	I18n.translate('support.number.currency.unit')	=> "£"	# Resolved from 'en-UK'
	I18n.translate('support.array.words_connector')	=> ", " # Resolved from default 'en'

Also added is a new function #locate which can be used as a debugging tool
to tell you in which locale a translation was found.

	I18n.locate('support.array.words_connector')	=> "en: ', '"
	

Contact
=======
kip cole 9 at g mail dot com
(remote the spaces etc etc)



Copyright (c) 2009 Kip Cole, released under the MIT license