Slides from my talk at Rails Underground. Video from the guys as SkillsMatter will follow. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 If you want to use my presentation in some way prohibited by this license, please get in touch with me and get my permission.

1. Rails i18n
From the Trenches
Clemens Kofler

2. Hi, I’m Clemens!
(Clemens Kofler, clemensk)

3. Today, I’m going to talk about ...
• The latest developments in Ruby/Rails i18n
• Current problems (in Rails) and potential
future changes

4. i18n

6. http://guides.rails.info/i18n.html

7. i18n basics in 2 minutes

9. Do you like Gettext?
(of course it’s fake)

10. _
s_
p_
t
n_
ns_
np_

13. i18n news

14. Additions in i18n 0.2.0
• translation procs
• custom namespace separators
• Ruby 1.9-style string interpolation
• (symlinked translations)

21. + a bunch of neat plugins
(list at the end)

22. Additions in i18n 0.2.0
• translation procs
• custom namespace separators
• Ruby 1.9-style string interpolation
• (symlinked translations)

23. bleeding edge

24. Current edge
• Base backend + module includes
• Pluralization module
• Cache module
• Locale fallbacks module from Globalize 2
• Chain backend from Globalize 2
• Gettext support (experimental)

33. Current edge
• Base backend + module includes
• Pluralization module
• Cache module
• Locale fallbacks module from Globalize 2
• Chain backend from Globalize 2
• Gettext support (experimental)

34. Current problems
• Tools
• Data input
• CLDR compliance
• Some unfinished integration (Date/Time#to_s, labels)
• Bad Rails implementations (AR Errors)
• (Clean) routing i18n nearly impossible
• (Gettext support / “enterprise-readiness”)

35. Tools

36. http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n-tools

39. Parsing dates/times is
really hard
(you can try out my experimental delocalize plugin)

45. You can do something like this with
translate_routes but it’s basically a really
scary hack.

46. i18n vs. Gettext?

47. War? Not really.

48. We are not Gettext
(and we don’t want to be)
((ever))

49. Recommendations

50. The Setup
• i18n edge
• Translations from GitHub
• (Globalize 2 for model translations)
• (localized_dates for transparent date
handling)
• (delocalize for parsing localized input)
• (translate_routes for i18n routing)

52. Questions?

53. Some resources
• http://rails-i18n.org
• http://guides.rails.info/i18n.html
• http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n
• http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n
• http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n-tools
• http://groups.google.com/group/rails-i18n
• Pluralization rules: http://gist.github.com/106372

54. clemens@railway.at
http://www.railway.at
http://github.com/clemens

55. Image credits
• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/708615
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferneyes/469259974/
• http://aceitapretzel.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/dexter-ap.jpg
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/2936384313/
• http://www.festivalcervantino.gob.mx/Ficesmas/prensa/galerias/oct/12/
Hamletokok/images/061012_hamlet_20FGJ.jpg
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/srgblog/1408923862/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/purrr/126597849/