Localization Questions

Question

I have some questions about localization for plugins and components. I've searched around on the Joomla site, and didn't see an answer. I thought I'd try to avoid an archeological expedition through the source to find my answer :)

Does Joomla recognize language-only named variant files? If I create a translation file named de.somepackage.ini, will it get picked up by sites running de-DE, de-CH, de-AT?

If a country-specific variant file is not found does it fall back to the nearest match? For example, if I create translation named de_DE.somepackage.ini, will it get picked up by sites running de-CH, or de-AT?

Is there a fallback mechanism? In Java, I might have a captions.properties file, a captions_de.properties, and a captions_de_CH.properties file. When I ask for captions for de-CH, it it reads each dictionary from least specific to most specific sequentially, and overwrites any keys with the more specific version. Is there a similar mechanism at work in Joomla?

Answer 1

Joomla does not support country-specific variant files.

Even with British-English and American English, there are different files:

• en-GB
• en-US

They way Joomla works with it's language strings is, each language should have it's own language file, however as of Joomla 3.2, the en-GB file is loaded first. This ensures any missing constants have a fallback, rather than displaying the constant itself.

So my suggestion would be, to always ensure your en-GB language file is the primary one and always the first to be kept up to date.